A single word in the statute decided whether a fired welder could ever win
Florida's top court just made it harder for fired workers to win whistleblower retaliation claims against their employers.
In a decision dated May 28, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court gave employers a clearer standard for defending against whistleblower retaliation claims – and made those claims tougher to win.
The dispute began in 2008, when Clint Gessner started as a welder mechanic at a Gulf Power Company plant in Pensacola. A decade later, the company fired him. By then, he was on a form of probation following multiple formal reprimands. According to the opinion, the final trigger was Gessner's use of racially disparaging language during a meeting, which Gulf Power identified as the precipitating event for his termination.
Gessner told a different story in court. He sued Gulf Power and its parent, Southern Company, saying he was fired in retaliation for objecting to unsafe conditions – practices he said exposed workers to environments that were in violation of state or federal laws, or that he reasonably and objectively believed were. Among his objections: accidents suffered by other employees, hydrogen line repairs while turbines were running, improperly purging natural gas lines, coal dust build-up, and stopping furnace fans with wooden blocks, among other safety concerns.
The whole case turned on one small word in Florida's private-sector Whistle-Blower's Act. The statute, section 448.102(3), shields employees who object to an employer practice that is in violation of a law, rule, or regulation. Gessner argued it was enough that he held a good-faith, reasonable belief that the conduct broke the law. The companies argued the conduct had to be an actual violation.
The Court charted a path that favored the employers. It held that an employee must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the practice is – by definition – in violation of law. A genuine belief, even a reasonable one, does not clear that bar. But the Court also refused to require a completed or already-adjudicated violation. An employee can still be protected for refusing to carry out an illegal act before it happens – the justices used the example of a worker told to dump hazardous waste into a waterway.
That distinction left Gessner without a remedy. The Court found he had shown only that he raised safety concerns and believed they were unlawful – not that the practices were, by definition, against the law. His alternative argument under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act's General Duty Clause also failed, because he made it only through conclusory statements and did not pursue it on appeal.
For HR leaders, the takeaway is practical. In Florida, an internal objection paired with sincere belief does not, by itself, switch on whistleblower protection. The conduct an employee objects to has to be genuinely unlawful. That shapes how teams document performance-based terminations, weigh retaliation exposure when a worker raises a complaint, and assess what counts as protected activity.
The ruling also resolved a long-running disagreement. Florida's appellate districts had split on this question, with the Fourth District favoring the employee-friendly reasonable-belief test and others rejecting it. The Supreme Court approved the stricter approach and disapproved the lenient one, giving employers and their counsel a single statewide rule.
The Chief Justice agreed with the result but wrote separately, saying he would have decided the case narrowly on its own facts rather than addressing hypothetical situations. One justice concurred in the result, and another was recused.
One caveat for anyone relying on it: the decision is not yet final. The opinion notes it remains open until the time to file a rehearing motion expires and, if one is filed, until it is resolved.
