A two-year legal battle over the firing of a Mobile police officer has taken a decisive turn in the city’s favor, after the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that had ordered the officer reinstated with back pay.
The case centers on former Mobile Police Department officer Fred Lawley, who was fired in 2015 after an internal trial board determined he had committed four “major violations” while on duty. Investigators alleged Lawley removed $2,050 in cash from a safe at a convenience store while responding to a burglary call, and that he was later deceptive about the incident during a polygraph examination administered as part of the department’s internal review. A Mobile County grand jury subsequently indicted Lawley on a charge of theft of property, though that criminal case has proceeded on a separate track and has not been a factor in the employment dispute that followed.
Lawley challenged his termination before the Mobile County Personnel Board, the agency that oversees hiring, firing and disciplinary matters for merit system employees across much of the county, including many City of Mobile positions. In 2016, the board overturned the firing, finding that the MPD had violated both Lawley’s due process rights and the board’s own procedural rules by barring him from the room while testimony against him was presented at his pre-disciplinary hearing.
Mobile County Circuit Judge Jay York upheld the personnel board’s decision on appeal, and the MPD was ordered to reinstate Lawley to his former position with back pay. The city of Mobile then appealed that ruling to the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, which sided with the city in March, reversing Judge York’s order.
At issue was how much access an employee is entitled to during the pre-disciplinary process. The city has argued that employees aren’t entitled to anything beyond what is explicitly spelled out in the applicable rule: a hearing, at least 24 hours’ notice of the charges against them, and an opportunity to respond to those charges. Lawley’s attorney, Ronnie L. Williams, countered that because the personnel board had overturned this and other terminations on similar grounds, Lawley should have been allowed to sit in on the entirety of his pre-disciplinary hearing rather than being present only for his own testimony before the MPD trial board.
“If the trial board or ‘board of inquiry’ is receiving testimony outside the presence of the employee, which means the appointing authority is in investigative mode, then exactly when did the employee receive notice of the final charges and the support for them?” Williams wrote in filings on Lawley’s behalf.
Legal precedent in Alabama has generally described pre-termination hearings, like the one Lawley received from the MPD, as an initial check against mistaken decisions, while post-termination hearings, like the one he later received from the personnel board, are meant to be the venue where an employee’s full concerns are addressed. That distinction became central to the appeals court’s analysis, since the personnel board’s 2016 decision to reinstate Lawley rested on its own interpretation of its procedural rules. The court was ultimately asked to decide how much authority the board has to interpret those rules for itself.
Writing for a unanimous panel in a decision issued March 17, Judge William C. Thompson acknowledged that the personnel board can adopt rules carrying “the force and effect of law” and has the authority to interpret them, but concluded that authority has limits. “There is no language in Rule 14.3 requiring the [MPD] to allow the employee to be present at a pre-disciplinary hearing while other witnesses are being questioned,” Thompson wrote. “The board goes beyond merely interpreting the rule and, instead, adds a requirement to the rule that is not suggested in the existing language.”
With the ruling unanimous and only weeks old, the appeals court is considered unlikely to revisit the case, leaving Lawley with the option of petitioning the Alabama Supreme Court as his last avenue of recourse. For the city, however, a final win could resolve a recurring point of friction between the MPD and the personnel board. In recent years, the board has voted to overturn MPD terminations on similar due process grounds in appeals brought by former officers Jeffrey Whitaker in 2015 and Cassandra Matthews in 2013.
The Court of Civil Appeals’ decision in Lawley’s case will not directly reopen those earlier matters, but it could shape how future disciplinary appeals from merit system employees across Mobile County are handled, by clarifying how far the personnel board’s rule-making authority extends when it comes to pre-disciplinary hearings. Officials with the city’s legal staff and the Mobile Police Department declined to discuss the pending litigation, and Lawley has likewise declined requests to discuss his case publicly.