The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of defendants Wellpinit School District (“WSD”) and John Adkins in a whistleblower retaliation action brought by David Krzesni under the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 (“NDAA”), 41 U.S.C. § 4712, and Washington state law.

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Krzesni alleged that he was unlawfully terminated from his job in retaliation for making protected disclosures regarding WSD’s purported misuse of federal grant money. He alleged that defendants retaliated by refusing to renew his contract after he disclosed information revealing that WSD had used grant money to fund a trip to Hawaii without the requisite authorization from the federal government. He also brought a wrongful discharge claim under Washington law.

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The panel held that to establish a prima facie whistleblower claim under the NDAA, a plaintiff must show that (1) an employee covered by the statute (2) communicated to a qualified person or body (3) a protected disclosure and (4) suffered an adverse employment action as a reprisal for making that disclosure. Once a prima facie claim is established, the employer may rebut it with clear and convincing evidence that it would have taken the same personnel action against the employee even if the protected disclosure had not occurred.

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The panel concluded that Krzesni’s act of reporting the Hawaii trip in an annual performance report was not a protected disclosure, and neither was his rhetorical question to a supervisor about the funding of the trip. The panel concluded that even if Krzesni made a protected disclosure in a call with the federal grant contact, this disclosure could not have been the basis for the adverse employment action because WSD had already decided not to renew Krzesni’s contract before then.

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The panel affirmed the district court’s grant of summary judgment on Krzesni’s state law wrongful discharge claim because the nonrenewal of his contract was not a discharge.

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https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2026/07/27/25-3308.pdf