Fire Chief's Legal Toolkit

Laws, in general, do not remotely resemble “plain english” and are therefore very difficult to navigate. While individual laws may be intended to “stand alone” and address a specific concern, the courts have pretty uniformly stated that everything must be taken in context–so if the legislature passes laws that contradict each other then we must

*Firehouse Legal blog posts provide information only and are not legal advice. For specific legal advice contact your attorney. No seriously, contact them, they’ll be happy to hear from you.*

In prior blogs I’ve discussed the application of FLSA rules to the fire service, and how to determine whether or not the specific hours worked

*Firehouse Legal blog posts provide information only and are not legal advice. For specific legal advice contact your attorney. No seriously, contact them, they’ll be happy to hear from you.*

Last month we dealt with a threshold question: Does the FLSA apply to the fire service? The answer, of course, was yes. The next questions

*Firehouse Legal blog posts provide information only, and are not legal advice. For specific legal advice contact your attorney. No seriously, contact them, they’ll be happy to hear from you.*

So, let’s start with the threshold question: Does the FLSA apply to fire departments? The answer, as most everyone knows at this point, is yes

Over the last few years I have spent significant time preparing and presenting discussions that have tackled broad scale legal topics within the fire service. I would sometimes spend my entire presentation time speaking on a single topic: Consolidations, the impact of Missouri’s medical marijuana legalization, fire department budget and finance issues, to name a