Out d’Coup Xtra | EXCLUSIVE interview with West Chester U Whistleblower Colleen Bradley and Lawyer Dan Kearney. Are they U.S. Supreme Court Bound?

On today’s Out d’Coup Xtra, Kevin Mahoney interviews Colleen Bradley and her lawyer, Dan Kearney, about her whistleblower case that is knocking on the door of the U.S. Supreme Court. Colleen Bradley was the former Director of Budget and Financial Planning at West Chester University who blew the whistle in 2014 about fraudulent budget practices at WCU and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. When she outed the fraud to the university community, she was fired. Bradley’s suit initially appeared to be a textbook case of an employer retaliating against an employee for blowing the whistle on corruption and financial malpractice. However, the U.S. Third Circuit Court denied Bradley First Amendment whistleblower protection in a manner that threatens to dramatically narrow whistleblower protections for every public employee in the nation. Bradley is in the process of filing a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court to review the lower court’s decision.

If the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to review the lower court’s decision, the rights of public employees - and all potential whistleblowers - will be gutted.

Raging Chicken Press reported on Colleen Bradley’s case when she filed her 62-page complaint against West Chester University and PASSHE in 2015. The documents Bradley filed confirmed Raging Chicken’s ongoing reporting on PASSHE’s dishonest and deceptive budgeting schemes (e.g. “Wall Street on the Susquehanna”; “PASSHE’s Austerity Magic”; and, “The Persistence of Crisis at KU”). Her case also provided concrete evidence in support of an independent audit commissioned by the faculty union APSCUF in late 2014, which raised concerned about PASSHE’s creative accounting practices. And yet, despite reams of evidence, the people responsible for the fraud at West Chester and other PASSHE universities have not been held accountable and, as the recently released “Bunsis Report” showed, the same deceptive practices continue.

And now, PASSHE’s decision to retaliate against Colleen Bradley for blowing the whistle on their deceptions has the additional consequence of putting all future whistleblowers at risk. Today’s Out d’Coup Xtra focuses on the legal issues at stake in her First Amendment whistleblower case. Raging Chicken is also conducting in-depth interviews with Bradley and her lawyers. We will be releasing those interviews in the coming days.