A single word in the statute decided whether a fired welder could ever win
Florida's top court just made it harder for fired workers to win whistleblower retaliation claims against their employers.
In a decision dated May 28, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court gave employers a clearer standard for defending against whistleblower retaliation claims – and made those claims tougher to win.
The dispute began in 2008, when Clint Gessner started as a welder mechanic at a Gulf Power Company plant in Pensacola. A decade later, the company fired him. By then, he was on a form of probation following multiple formal reprimands. According to the opinion, the final trigger was Gessner's use of racially disparaging language during a meeting, which Gulf Power identified as the precipitating event for his termination.
Gessner told a different story in court. He sued Gulf Power and its parent, Southern Company, saying he was fired in retaliation for objecting to unsafe conditions – practices he said exposed workers to environments that were in violation of state or federal laws, or that he reasonably and objectively believed were. Among his objections: accidents suffered by other employees, hydrogen line repairs while turbines were running, improperly purging natural gas lines, coal dust build-up, and stopping furnace fans with wooden blocks, among other safety concerns.
The whole case turned on one small word in Florida's private-sector Whistle-Blower's Act. The statute, section 448.102(3),...
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