Diana Uhimov, March 11, 2014. Early this month, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the whistleblower provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) protects employees of private contractors conducting work for publicly-traded companies in the same way as it protects the public company’s employees.  The relevant part of the statute at issue states that “no public company … or any … contractor … of such company may [retaliate] against an employee … because of [SOX – protected activity].”  The Court found that a plain reading of…