A Clark County juvenile probation officer in Nevada was terminated after a federally required background check revealed that he had failed to disclose prior discipline and had resigned from a previous position while under investigation for misconduct involving juvenile residents. The County determined that termination was required by federal regulations implementing the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) governing the hiring and promotion of employees who may have contact with residents in juvenile facilities as referenced in 28 C.F.R. § 115.317. These regulations prohibit agencies from hiring or promoting anyone who has engaged in sexual abuse, requires agencies to consider any incidents of sexual harassment in determining whether to hire or promote anyone, and requires agencies to perform background checks of candidates for hiring or promotion. The County determined that the employee’s misrepresentation of the circumstances of his separation from his prior employment warranted termination under 28 C.F.R. § 115.317(g), which provides that “[m]aterial omissions … or the provision of materially false information, shall be grounds for termination.”
The Juvenile Justice Probation Officers Association grieved the discharge and sought arbitration under the parties’ collective bargaining agreement (CBA), but the County filed a motion in district court to stay the arbitration, arguing the dispute was not arbitrable. The district court agreed and stayed the proceeding. The Association appealed.
The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed, focusing on the scope of the CBA’s arbitration clause. Although the agreement permits arbitration of grievances involving the “interpretation and application” of its terms and certain disciplinary actions, the Court held that the clause is “narrow,” not broad, and applies only to a defined subset of disputes.
That subset is defined by the agreement’s treatment of discipline. The CBA limits arbitrable discipline to “corrective actions,” defined as measures “implemented to assist an employee in overcoming a substantiated deficiency related to behavior or work performance.” While termination is listed as one of several possible corrective actions that can be arbitrated, the Court emphasized that not all terminations qualify as “corrective actions.”
The Court held that the instant termination was not “corrective” and therefore non-arbitrable. The Court reasoned that the termination was not imposed to correct or sanction a performance or behavioral deficiency, but instead resulted from the County’s obligation to comply with PREA regulations governing hiring and retention in juvenile facilities. Because the discharge was “implemented pursuant to PREA regulations,” it fell outside the CBA’s definition of corrective discipline and therefore outside the scope of arbitration. Because the dispute fell outside the scope of the parties’ agreement to arbitrate, the district court properly granted the motion to stay arbitration.
Juvenile Justice Probation Officers Ass’n v. Clark County, 142 Nev. Adv. Op. 28, 2026 WL 969396 (Nev. Apr. 9, 2026).