Today the Fifth Circuit reversed a lower court ruling in favor of a Fire District concluding that the former Fire Chief may have had a property interest in the position of Fire Chief under Louisiana civil service law. This case also points out the somewhat difficult issue of integrating volunteer with paid fire services - more on that later. Here, the chief claimed to have had a right to notice and process before being terminated. The lower court concluded that he was not entitled to those protections as he did not have a property interest in the job. The Fifth Circuit on the other hand concluded that the evidence was sufficient to create a factual dispute as to whether Louisiana law made him a civil service employee entitling him to those job protections. The facts also included a discussion of how the city of Independence closed its fire department in 2012 and all employees were terminated and became employed by the Independence Volunteer Fire Department a subsidiary organization of the Parish Rural Fire Protection District a political subdivision of the State. A contract was presented suggesting how the District and its ten volunteer fire departments were to function and how the lines of authority were to be constructed and implemented. The lower court refused to consider the contract because it was not authenticated or signed, but the Fifth Circuit held that under the relaxed pleadings allowed under the federal rules that under Rule 56 the court should have considered the contract or at least allowed the Plaintiff to substantiate its validity. Now, to another issue of the integration issue - whether this continues to be true, I do not know, but when I was County Attorney in MoCo, we had the feds (with the help of the union) conclude that Rule 207k did not provide protection to employees of the Volunteer Fire Departments in the County as they were not "public agencies" as defined in the FLSA, thus Kelly Days and other tools used in scheduling firefighters were not exempt under the Act and employees were required to be paid overtime for all hours over 40 in a workweek. This was despite the full funding of all of those positions by the county. I'd be very hesitant to set up a system as was established in the case discussed without understanding the implications of the FLSA. http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/16/16-30673-CV0.pdf Charles W. Thompson, Jr. Executive Director and General Counsel International Municipal Lawyers Association, Inc. 51 Monroe Street Suite 404 Rockville, Maryland 20850 202-466-5424 x7110 Direct: 202-742-1016 Cell: 240-876-6790 Plan ahead: IMLA's Annual Conference October 14- October 18, 2017 - Niagara, Ontario, Canada (Passport required) To register, go to: http://imla.org/events/conferences#registration IMLA's Annual Seminar and Section 1983 Defense Conference - April 20- April 23, 2018 Washington, DC