The plaintiffs are the Florida State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police, Inc., Sergeant Joel Cuarezma, and Detective Scott Kushi, all of whom work for or are affiliated with the Pembroke Pines Police Department.
The underlying dispute began in June 2025, when a staffing shortage on the bicycle patrol team led Captain Feiner to order Sergeant Cuarezma to seek volunteers to swap shifts. Cuarezma sent a department-wide email seeking volunteers. Detective Kushi, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Union, then sent Cuarezma a series of text messages — and had a phone conversation with him — over two days on their personal cell phones while both were off duty, discussing what Kushi believed was a collective bargaining agreement violation. Cuarezma told Captain Feiner he believed the volunteer email violated the CBA and that he intended to recall it. Feiner told Cuarezma not to recall the email and that Feiner would handle the matter himself. Cuarezma nonetheless sent a second email instructing recipients to disregard the first. Internal Affairs opened an investigation, and Sergeant Sorensen of that unit eventually issued what he called a public records request demanding all written communications — including emails, texts, and notes — related to the volunteer email among Feiner, Kushi, and Cuarezma, threatening that noncompliance would be directly contrary to an official order and could constitute a first-degree misdemeanor under section 119.10 of the Florida Statutes.
Judge Ed Artau, sitting in the Southern District of Florida, held that the demand was invalid on its face. Under Florida's public records law, only a person — not an agency — may make a public records request, and the court held that Sorensen was acting on behalf of the Police Department, and by extension the City of Pembroke Pines, when he issued the demand. The court reasoned that the word person in Article I, section 24(a) of the Florida Constitution and section 119.01(1) of the Florida Statutes carries its common-law meaning, which excludes the sovereign and its agents. The court also noted that section 119.011(2) separately defines agency to include government units and entities acting on behalf of public agencies — meaning an entity qualifying as an agency cannot simultaneously be a person under the statute. The court added that it would be nonsensical for an agency to make a public records request from itself, since the agency would already have access to the records.
Several facts reinforced the agency-capacity finding. Sorensen did not generate the formal request until after the Union contested his initial demand, and he threatened that noncompliance would be directly contrary to an official order — authority he could only wield on behalf of the department, not in a personal capacity. The court declined to follow a Florida Attorney General opinion cited by the defendants, concluding that the opinion addressed only whether a public employee acting in a private capacity may make a records request without supervisory approval, not whether an employee acting on behalf of an agency may do so.
On the Fourth Amendment claim, the court held that none of the department's other relevant actions constituted a search. Captain Feiner's email asking Cuarezma to share the texts was a consent request, not a compelled intrusion, and Feiner acknowledged Cuarezma's refusal without threatening penalties. The preservation orders issued to both officers directed them only to retain the messages, not to surrender or expose them to the department.
The court also rejected the plaintiffs' argument that a constitutional violation constitutes per se irreparable harm. Drawing on the Supreme Court's June 2025 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., the court reasoned that federal equitable jurisdiction traces to the English High Court of Chancery, which required a showing of permanent injury — analogous to waste — before issuing a preliminary injunction, and did not treat ordinary trespasses as automatically warranting injunctive relief. The Eleventh Circuit has similarly held that a Fourteenth Amendment violation is not per se irreparable harm. Because the public records demand was unenforceable, the officers faced no criminal exposure for refusing to comply, and the only remaining harm from the insubordination investigation was the time and money spent defending it — which the court held insufficient under controlling precedent.
Both motions for temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions were denied.