Judge denies Pembroke Pines bid in police text message records fight

A federal judge has again put Pembroke Pines on the losing side of a fight over text messages tied to the Police Department, leaving unresolved whether off-duty cellphone exchanges between a sergeant and a union president must be treated as public records.

In the case Florida State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police, Inc., et al. v. Pembroke Pines et al., No. 0:25-cv-61620-EA, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Judge Ed Artau held a hearing on Sept. 25, 2025, and issued the controlling order on March 30, 2026. He denied the plaintiffs’ motions for temporary restraining orders and preliminary injunctions, but also ruled that the alleged public-records request was “invalid and unenforceable” under Florida law because it was made by a government agency, not a “person” under Chapter 119.

The dispute started in June 2025 after a staffing shortage hit the Pembroke Pines Police Department’s bicycle patrol team. Sergeant Joel Cuarezma sent an email asking for volunteers to swap shifts, and Detective Scott Kushi, the president of the union branch, texted Cuarezma that the email may have violated the collective bargaining agreement. The two then exchanged texts and a phone call on their personal cellphones while off duty, turning a routine staffing issue into a broader fight over what communications can be pulled into the public-records process.

Artau also rejected the Fourth Amendment claim, finding no forced search or seizure and no irreparable harm that would justify emergency relief. The lawsuit remains active, and the fight has continued into this summer rather than ending with the March order.

On June 17, 2026, Magistrate Judge Panayotta D. Augustin-Birch denied a motion to compel deposition testimony and canceled a June 22 discovery hearing, another sign that the case is still moving through contentious pretrial proceedings. The docket shows the case was filed Aug. 11, 2025.

For Pembroke Pines, the stakes go beyond one set of texts. The case reaches into how much information about police labor disputes, department staffing and city communications can remain off limits when residents, journalists and watchdog groups ask what happened inside city government. In Broward, where police accountability and public access often overlap, the ruling keeps that question open for now.