Florida court gives public employers control over closed union grievance arbitration hearings
Florida police union loses its fight to open a grievance hearing to the public, handing public employers firmer control over disciplinary disputes.
On June 3, 2026, Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed a lower court and ruled that arbitration hearings between a public employer and a public employee union do not have to be open to the public under the state's Sunshine Law. For HR and labor-relations leaders who run unionized public workforces, it is a useful piece of certainty on a question that comes up often.
The dispute started inside the Miramar Police Department. An officer, Leonardo Braga, was disciplined after an investigation determined he had violated department policies. His union, the Florida State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police, filed a grievance under the collective bargaining agreement, or CBA, the contract that governs the relationship between the city and the union. The city denied the grievance. The union demanded arbitration.
That is when the two sides got stuck on a procedural fight. Should the arbitration hearing be open or closed? The union wanted other union members in the room. The city refused to proceed with them there. So, the union went to court and asked a judge to declare the hearing public.
The trial court agreed with the union. It ruled that labor arbitration under a public-sector CBA must be open under section 286.011(1), Florida's open-meetings law. The city and Police Chief Delrish Moss appealed – and won.
The appeals court kept its reasoning tight and grounded in the words of the statute. The Sunshine Law opens meetings of any board or commission to the public. A board is a group of people. So is a commission. An arbitrator is a single neutral person who decides a dispute. One person is not a board or a commission – a point the union conceded. So the law simply does not cover a lone arbitrator's hearing.
The union had a backup argument: a second statute that ties collective bargaining negotiations to the Sunshine Law. The court was not persuaded. Collective bargaining, it explained, is the work of meeting and negotiating to land a written contract. Running that contract afterward – and arbitrating disputes under it – is something else. Negotiation happens between the parties, without an outsider stepping in. Arbitration is defined by an outsider stepping in to decide. An arbitration hearing, then, is not a collective bargaining negotiation, so the open-meetings rule does not reach it.
The court was also careful to mark the edges of its ruling. It did not say an arbitrator is barred from opening a hearing to the public. It did not say employers and unions cannot agree to open hearings in their contract. And it pointed out that the public may still be able to get transcripts of these arbitrations. The holding is narrow: section 286.011(1) does not force every arbitration into public view.
So, what does this mean for the people who run HR and labor relations in government? The takeaway is practical. Grievance arbitration over discipline can stay closed unless a statute or the CBA says otherwise. That hands public employers more say over the confidentiality of disciplinary hearings. But it also puts the responsibility on both sides to settle the open-or-closed question where it belongs – at the bargaining table. If it matters to you, put it in the contract.
