Does the public policy doctrine in Minnesota apply only if the employee has been fired for refusing to violate the law?

American Tissue Services Foundation (ATSF) was in the business of supplying human tissue from cadavers for transplantation into live patients. Mike Slack, an employee of ATSF, revealed to his boss that he had falsified a donor medical record and changed the donor’s blood type on the form. This falsification was not only dangerous to recipients of the tissue, it violated Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations. Slack was fired and the infractions were reported to the FDA, as required by law.

It turned out, however, that Slack was the foster child of the company’s chairman. And, in this case, (foster) blood was thicker than water. The chairman not only hired Slack at another company as a quality assurance specialist (believe it or not), but he fired Slack’s boss and the two men who had reported the problem to the FDA. The men filed suit against ATSF for wrongful discharge, but the company filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the public policy doctrine in Minnesota applied only to employees who had refused to violate the law.