On October 5, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the insider trading conviction of a high-level business executive. The executive, the former CEO of Qwest Communications, was convicted of selling Qwest stock while knowing internal Qwest predictions that the company was at risk of missing year-end financial projections – i.e., projections of revenues eight to twelve months in the future. The one-sentence order declining review was a setback for WLF, which filed a brief urging the Court to grant review and/or overturn the conviction. WLF argued that the “soft” information of which the executive was aware cannot be deemed “material” and thus cannot serve as the basis for an insider trading conviction. WLF argued that the rules adopted by the lower courts in upholding the conviction were so stringent that they essentially would prohibit executives from selling stock of their companies. A federal appeals court voted 5-4 to uphold the conviction.