The first person to win protection under a federal law that shields whistleblowers has lost his bid to get his job back.

A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled Tuesday that David Welch failed to explain how his employer’s alleged shoddy accounting practices could be considered a violation of federal law.

Welch was fired as chief financial officer of Cardinal Bankshares Corp. in 2002 after reporting what he said were misclassifications in the bank’s financial reports.

An administrative law judge ruled Welch was entitled to reinstatement under the whistleblower law, but that decision was reversed by the Department of Labor’s Administrative Review Board. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld that ruling.