Reinstatement, back pay ordered for fired MHP trooper

An arbitrator last week ordered reinstatement and back pay for a Montana Highway Patrol trooper the agency fired about a year ago over claims of insubordination. 

MHP accused Trooper Alicia Bragg, who was also union president at the time, of sharing the results of a workplace climate survey despite orders not to. The survey administered in early 2024 found that some employees thought the state Department of Justice under Attorney General Austin Knudsen micromanaged the agency, leading to low morale.

Bragg, who had worked for MHP since 2011, was fired last April. The union filed a complaint on her behalf that May, and a hearing on the matter was held last December.

In his decision dated April 4, arbitrator Jeffrey Jacobs ordered the reinstatement and back pay, finding that Bragg was not in the wrong to share the survey with the Montana Federation of Public Employees, nor did she omit a full account of her actions during a brief April 2024 phone call with MHP Maj. Justin Braun.

Jacobs, an arbiter based in Minnesota, agreed with MFPE attorney Nate McConnell’s argument that the survey was created with public funds and lacked private information, meaning it fell within the purview of Montana’s right-to-know law that entitles the public to access nonsensitive government documents. Though Jacobs also found it was not up to an employee to decide whether a document could be shared under that law, he ruled Bragg was entitled to send the survey to her union in her role as the MHP union president. 

“The inescapable conclusion is that [Bragg] was acting in her capacity as the Union President when she sent the document to the Union,” Jacobs wrote in his 48-page decision. “It was also clear she did not send the document to the press nor did she direct anyone at the Union to do so. While the survey may have been somewhat embarrassing to the MHP, that alone did not render her action terminable.”

The survey’s results were first published by the Daily Montanan in March 2024. Jacobs’ decision does not say who sent the survey to the press.

Bragg celebrated Jacobs’s decision in a statement released by MFPE on Tuesday afternoon.

“I was terminated nearly a year ago for doing my job, as a trooper who loves serving my state and as a union president who’s fiercely loyal to my fellow law enforcement officers,” Bragg said. “Senior leaders at MHP and DOJ tried to sanitize and slow roll a public workplace climate survey that reflected poorly on their leadership, and I stood up for troopers.”

MFPE President Amanda Curtis applauded the decision and commended Bragg for her “leadership and service.”

Neither MHP nor its parent agency, the Montana Department of Justice, immediately responded to a request for comment Tuesday.