Richard R. Renner

Richard R. Renner joined the firm in May 2013 and became a Partner in October 2015. He has more than 30 years’ experience representing employees in a wide range of civil rights and whistleblower cases. He has particular experience in using litigation to advance the rights of employees, consumers and immigrants.

Mr. Renner is a 1978 graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a 1981 graduate of New York University Law School. While in law school, he volunteered to represent claimants through the Unemployment Action Center. As the principal of Tate & Renner in Dover, Ohio, he represented environmental whistleblowers, victims of wage theft, consumers and immigrants.

He served as Co-Chair of the Whistleblower Committee of the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA), and twice won election to NELA’s Executive Board. He served as Legal Director of the National Whistleblowers Center.

Mr. Renner has undertaken advocacy with the U.S. Department of Labor, submitting numerous official regulatory comments on how the Department can improve its program to protect whistleblowers. He testified to the Department’s Whistleblower Protection Program Advisory Committee (WPAC) meetings in January, 2013, and March, 2014.

The Department acknowledged his comments as the impetus for improvements in the Department’s final regulations. He has written a series of amicus briefs addressing the scope of protection and procedural rights of corporate fraud whistleblowers under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).

He co-wrote the only amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to accept the case of Lawson v. FMR LLC, 134 S. Ct. 1158 (2014). The Supreme Court accepted the case. Mr. Renner then co-wrote the amicus brief of the National Employment Lawyers Association and the Government Accountability Project on the merits. On March 4, 2014, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision establishing that SOX protects the employees of the contractors of public companies.

Mr. Renner was the lead author of an amicus brief in Foster v. Univ. of Md.-Eastern Shore, 787 F. 3d 243 (4th Cir 2015). Filed on behalf of the Metropolitan Washington Employment Lawyers Association (MWELA), the brief successfully argued that traditional methods of proving retaliation still apply after the Supreme Court’s decision in University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center v. Nassar, 133 S.Ct. 2517 (2013).