By Stephen Kohn ( March 6, 2018, 12:34 PM EST) -- In Digital Realty Trust v. Somers,[1] the U.S. Supreme Court, with the silent endorsement of every major corporation, undermined Wall Street's advocacy of internal corporate compliance programs as an alternative to whistleblower qui tam reward laws, such as those contained in the Dodd-Frank Act or the False Claims Act. In a stunning blow to internal corporate "hot lines" and compliance programs designed to encourage employees to report potential frauds to their managers or legal departments, the Supreme Court ruled that internal whistleblowing was not a protected activity under federal law. Unless a statute explicitly covered internal disclosures in its definition of whistleblowing, internal complaints were not protected....