Background
Brian Blunt became a Gilbert Police Department commander in 2021. In exchange for a pay raise, he signed an offer letter making his employment at will, allowing either side to end the relationship with or without cause. At that time, Arizona’s Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights permitted written employment agreements that deviated from its protections.
In 2022, the Legislature amended A.R.S. § 38-1102 to prohibit agreements providing peace officers with less protection than the statute. After the Town investigated employee complaints against Blunt in 2023, it terminated him without providing the investigative report, a pretermination hearing, or an appeal. Blunt sued, and the federal district court dismissed his case. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit certified three state-law questions to the Arizona Supreme Court.
The Court’s Holding
The Arizona Supreme Court held that the statutory presumption against retroactivity bars applying the 2022 amendment to at-will employment agreements executed before the amendment took effect on September 24, 2022. The Legislature did not expressly make the amendment retroactive.
The court concluded that the amendment affects substantive contractual rights, rather than merely procedures. The Town’s contractual right to terminate Blunt at will vested when the parties executed their agreement in 2021, because the then-existing statute allowed them to contract around the Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights protections. The court therefore did not answer the remaining certified questions concerning whether the amendment would void the contract or violate Arizona’s Contracts Clause.
Key Takeaways
- Arizona’s 2022 amendment to A.R.S. § 38-1102 applies prospectively, not to earlier at-will agreements.
- An employment term permitting at-will termination is a vested substantive contractual right when the agreement is executed.
- Peace-officer agreements signed on or after September 24, 2022 cannot provide protections below the statutory minimum.
Why It Matters
The decision preserves pre-2022 at-will agreements between Arizona law-enforcement employers and officers where the earlier version of the statute permitted deviations from Peace Officers’ Bill of Rights protections. Later discipline under such an agreement does not itself make the 2022 amendment applicable.
The ruling also underscores that Arizona’s retroactivity analysis turns on the operative event and whether a right is substantive and vested, not simply on when later conduct brings that right into dispute.