In three years of raising allegations of fraud and misspending at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Michelle Doggett didn't see herself as a whistleblower and never filled out a special application to become one.

Late Thursday, a state judge rejected arguments by Livermore's operator, the University of California, that Doggett wasn't really a whistleblower without that piece of paper.

Doggett, a former manager of energy research funds at the federal lab, now may go to trial in September on claims that top lab managers and the university retaliated against her for exposing misuse of scientific monies.

Doggett first alerted her supervisors to the inflated and reshuffled charges in 1995, then reported them higher in lab management and to lab criminal investigators, who asked her to covertly collect evidence for them. She did, for several months, and finally went to deputy lab director Robert Kuckuck, who she says told her she didn't "have to do anything more."

Supervisors stripped Doggett of her oversight of research funding, she says, and gave her negative performance reviews.

"They were trying to get the whistleblowers out of there," said her attorney, Jan Nielsen. "They were not talking to her, keeping her out of meetings. They were just trying to make her feel uncomfortable to get her out of there. And it really had a severe impact on her."

Doggett left Livermore on a stress disability in 1999 and since has made her allegations in reports to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General and in her lawsuit.

Said Livermore lab spokeswoman Lynda Seaver, "We don't believe Ms. Doggett is a whistleblower, even though we valued the information she shared with us."

On Thursday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge James A. Richman turned aside those claims by UC attorneys. He found "there is a strong public policy concerning whistleblowing."

"Despite the judge's ruling, we welcome the opportunity to go to trial ...," Seaver said.

Under state law, whistleblowers such as Doggett face a slightly lower standard of proof than employers do in establishing a rationale for employment actions that appear retaliatory.