In a decision issued October 13, 2026, the Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld a Superior Court order permanently staying arbitration of a grievance filed by the State Police Association of Massachusetts. The dispute centered on the colonel’s 2022 order requiring officers to work additional hours and denying time off for Independence Day events on the Esplanade.
General Laws c. 22C, § 18 authorizes the colonel to mandate extra duty “in the event of any public emergency, or of any unusual demand for the services of members of the state police … or whenever he deems it in the public interest.” In 1999 the parties signed a side letter declaring that Marathon Monday/Patriot’s Day and the Fourth of July would not, by themselves, trigger that authority, and made the side letter subject to the collective-bargaining agreement’s grievance-arbitration procedures.
The union argued that the side letter bound the department and that an arbitrator should decide whether the 2022 order was justified. The Appeals Court disagreed. Citing long-standing precedent on nondelegable managerial prerogatives in public safety, the court held that § 18 confers core authority essential to the colonel’s statutory mandate. That authority cannot be bargained away or submitted to arbitration, even by mutual agreement.
“The protection of a public employer’s management prerogative is particularly strong where … the prerogative concerns policy judgments in the allocation and deployment of law enforcement resources,” the court observed. Because the staffing decision implicated public safety and could not lawfully be the subject of arbitration, the permanent stay was proper.
The ruling reinforces that certain operational decisions by the State Police colonel remain outside the reach of collective bargaining when public safety is at stake.