A Leon County circuit judge has rejected requests by the New College of Florida Board of Trustees and the state university system’s Board of Governors to dismiss a challenge to a 2023 law that did away with arbitration in university employment disputes.
Judge J. Lee Marsh last week allowed the lawsuit filed by the United Faculty of Florida, its New College chapter and a professor, Hugo Viera-Vargas, to move forward.
The 2023 law prevented arbitration of grievances filed by faculty members over issues such as tenure denials. It said grievances could not be appealed beyond the level of university presidents.
The lawsuit, initially filed last year and revised in March, alleges that the law violates constitutional collective-bargaining rights and impairs existing union contracts. It said Viera-Vargas could not go to arbitration after receiving a tenure denial from New College.
The New College Board of Trustees and the university system Board of Governors, the defendants, raised a series of issues in seeking dismissal of the lawsuit. But Marsh rejected the arguments in a seven-page decision.
“Here, plaintiffs alleged the arbitration provisions in the collective bargaining agreement were bargained-for,” Marsh wrote in one part of the decision. “This claim is more than plausible given that the collective bargaining agreement’s arbitration provisions go well beyond the requirements (of part of state law) by setting out the scope and procedures of any arbitration in detail.”
