A public employee in Texas has to report a violation to an appropriate law enforcement authority to be protected as a whistle-blower from retaliation, says the state's Supreme Court in a case involving dismissal of a physician who filed his complaint only with his supervisor.

Dr. Larry Gentilello, a professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, had complained to his supervisor, Dr. Robert Rege, that trauma residents in Parkland Hospital in Dallas were treating and operating on patients without an attending physician's supervision, in violation of Medicare and Medicaid requirements and procedures, according to Friday's ruling in the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas v. Larry M. Gentilello.

After Dr. Gentilello was stripped of his faculty chair positions, he filed a whistle-blower suit that charged the demotion was in retaliation for reporting the center's violation of federal rules.

But the court said that, unlike other state whistle-blower laws that accommodate internal reports to supervisors, under the Texas Whistleblower Act, a public employee is protected under the statute only if he goes to someone whom he believes “in good faith” is “an appropriate law enforcement authority.”

Dr. Rege, who “is not a police officer or prosecutor,” did not fit this category, said the unanimous nine-judge court. Furthermore, said the ruling, which reverses a lower court ruling, Dr. Gentilello should have realized this.

“Given his training and expertise, he should have known that his supervisor's purely internal authority was not law enforcement but law compliance — in other words, Rege was only capable of ensuring that (the center) followed federal directives. The bare power to urge compliance or pure noncompliance does not transform Rege into an 'appropriate law enforcement authority' as defined in the Act,” said the ruling.

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Commenting on the ruling, Michael W. Fox, a shareholder with law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C., said the Texas law is comparable to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which also encourages whistle-blowers to go first outside the company.

While the Texas Supreme Court ruling was in line with the law, “anything that puts the emphasis on taking problems first outside the agency or outside the company are potentially problematic, and it would be good for us to rewrite the laws to encourage first going internally,” Mr. Fox said.

There should be two objectives to such legislation, he said: “How do we minimize litigation that may be based on just misunderstandings and miscommunication between an employee and a supervisor, and how do we try to funnel information or complaints of wrongdoing first to an appropriate level” within the company that can act on it, Mr. Fox said.

The medical center is also one of the parties in a case to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court: University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Naiel Nassar, on the issue of standards of proof required to successfully pursue retaliation and other employment cases.