Firefighters Can’t Raise Funds While on the Clock

(CN) - OMAHA, Neb., firefighters lost their fight against a state agency that forbade them from raising money for a charity while on duty.

Affirming the decisions of the district court in Lancaster County, and the Nebraska Court of Appeals, the state Supreme Court said that it did not have the authority to override the advisory opinion of the State of Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission.

The commission had ruled that firefighters had violated the Nebraska Political Accountability and Disclosure Act by participating in the Muscular Dystrophy Association's "Fill the Boot" fundraising campaign on city time.

The nonprofit joined the Nebraska Professional Firefighters Association and its president Dave Engler in a lawsuit that met its end last month.

"Section 84-911, upon which appellants rely and upon which the case was considered in the lower courts, is a limited waiver of sovereign immunity, and the advisory opinion which the appellants seek to have reviewed in their case against the Commission is not a matter for which waiver has been granted," Justice Lindsey Miller-Lerman wrote for the court.

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