He reported safety issues and got fired. His own petition finished the job
A CDL instructor reported safety violations at his community college. Then he got fired - and lost in court, too.
The Court of Appeals of Iowa on November 4 affirmed the dismissal of wrongful termination and whistleblower claims brought by a former driving instructor against Iowa Western Community College.
The instructor had taught in the college’s commercial driver’s license program since March 2022. According to his petition, a new student joined his class in November 2024 without a valid learner’s permit - a prerequisite for the supervised road driving the course requires. He removed the student from the college’s Training Provider Registry so no other instructor would mistakenly assume the student was ready for on-road instruction.
That was the start of the friction.
When the student needed extra time to finish the curriculum, the instructor reminded an administrator that Iowa’s third-party testing rules required a different instructor to handle the student’s final test. According to the petition, the administrator did not make that reassignment. The instructor reported the potential violation to a CDL auditor at the Iowa Department of Transportation. After his report, the DOT audited the college’s CDL program.
The college fired him in February 2025, alleging “inefficiency, incompetence or negligence in the performance of his duties . . . .” The instructor denied any performance problems and alleged college staff forged his signature on a performance improvement plan.
He sued on two fronts. First, he argued his firing violated public policy because he had reported regulatory breaches. Second, he claimed protection under Iowa Code section 70A.28 - the state’s whistleblower law for government employees.
Both claims failed, for entirely different reasons.
On the public policy argument, the court found the CDL regulations the instructor pointed to were too broad to count. Iowa only allows this kind of wrongful termination claim when the employee can point to a statute or regulation that clearly sets out a specific policy protecting their conduct - not just a general statement of purpose. The federal and state CDL rules dealt with testing requirements generally. Their stated goal of reducing truck and bus accidents was not specific enough to clear that bar.
The whistleblower claim ran into an even simpler problem. Iowa’s whistleblower statute only covers state employees. In his own petition - under the wrongful termination argument - the instructor had stated that he was not a state employee and that the college was not a state agency. On appeal, he argued he should have been allowed to take contradictory positions across his two claims, saying he was not a state employee in one count but relying on state-employee protections in the other. Iowa law does allow that kind of alternative argument, but the instructor never raised the issue with the trial court. Because the trial court never ruled on it, the appeals court could not consider it.
The instructor reported what he believed were genuine safety problems. But in Iowa, a wrongful termination claim built on public policy needs more than a regulation that touches on safety - it needs one that clearly spells out a specific policy protecting the employee’s conduct. General goals like reducing truck accidents did not clear that bar. And the whistleblower statute was never in play for a non-state employee at a community college.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s dismissal of both claims.
