He signed away just-cause protections before the law changed - the court held him to it
When the Town of Gilbert promoted a police officer to commander in 2021, he got a pay rise and a catch.
The catch was an at-will agreement. Either side could walk at any time, for any reason. Under Arizona’s Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights (POBR) as it stood then, that was perfectly lawful - POBR expressly allowed employers and officers to contract around its protections, including the right to be fired only for just cause.
A year later, the legislature rewrote that rule. The 2022 amendment turned POBR’s protections into a floor. Employers could no longer strip officers of just-cause rights by contract.
But the commander’s agreement predated the change. In 2023, after employee complaints triggered an outside investigation, the Town fired him. It denied his request for a pre-termination hearing, withheld the investigation report, and ignored his appeal.
He sued, arguing the amendment had wiped out the at-will clause. He wanted the full suite of POBR protections - a hearing, an appeal, and termination only for just cause.
The case climbed through the federal system until the Ninth Circuit asked the Arizona Supreme Court to settle the state-law question: does the presumption against retroactivity stop the 2022 amendment from reaching agreements signed before it took effect?
On October 9, 2026, the court said yes. All seven justices agreed.
The reasoning turned on when the Town’s contractual rights locked in. Under Arizona law, a statute does not apply retroactively unless the legislature expressly says so - and the 2022 amendment contained no such language. The court found POBR’s just-cause protections are substantive rights, not procedural rules, and the Town’s right to terminate at will vested when the contract was signed in 2021. Not when discipline happened in 2023.
The commander argued at-will work renews daily - rolling one-day contracts. The court was not persuaded. That theory confused how parties can modify a contract going forward with rewriting an existing term after the fact.
He also warned the ruling would unravel civil rights and minimum wage laws. The court drew a sharp distinction: those statutes apply to every employment relationship regardless of contract. POBR’s just-cause requirement covers only peace officers and one bargained-for term.
The court did not reach the two remaining certified questions because the first was dispositive.
For HR teams managing public-sector contracts, the takeaway is direct: an at-will agreement signed before a legislative change to termination protections holds unless the legislature expressly made the new law retroactive.
