It started with voided traffic tickets – and a former mayor's grandson
An Atlanta cop lost his flexible schedule a week after reporting his bosses – and a federal appeals court just revived his retaliation claim.
On March 25, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit handed down a decision that should get the attention of any employer still treating informal scheduling perks as inconsequential. The ruling makes clear that stripping a longstanding flextime arrangement from an employee who just filed a whistleblower complaint can amount to a materially adverse employment action – even when that arrangement was never written into a policy manual.
Terry Joyner was a lieutenant with the Atlanta Police Department who had been on the force since 1992. In October 2015, he reported Police Chief George Turner and Major Van Hobbs to both the FBI and the department's Office of Professional Standards, alleging they had pressured a fellow officer into voiding traffic tickets issued to the grandson of Andrew Young, the former mayor of Atlanta and former United States ambassador to the United Nations. One week later, Hobbs ordered Joyner placed on a rigid 10-to-6 schedule, ending a flexible arrangement that lieutenants across the department had used for years.
Joyner had relied on that flexibility for more than a decade. He used it to work a second job with a private security company, which his supervisors knew about and had approved in writing. The schedule change...
Panaji: The Public Works Department (PWD), Government of Goa, has strongly refuted allegations being circulated on social media and certain media platforms regarding a so-called "Rs 1,000 crore sc...