Des Moines Independent School District Building Trades Maintenance Council and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union No. 347 v. Des Moines Independent Community School District

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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 25-1499
Filed October 21, 2026
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Des Moines Independent School District Building Trades Maintenance
Council and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local
Union No. 347,
Plaintiffs–Appellants,
v.
Des Moines Independent Community School District,
Defendant–Appellee.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County,
The Honorable Scott J. Beattie, Judge.
_______________
AFFIRMED
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Jason R. McClitis (argued) and Jordan L. Glasgow of Blake & Uhlig, P.A.,
Overland Park, Kansas, attorneys for appellants.
Bradley M. Beaman (argued) and Logan S. Brundage (until withdrawal) of
Ahlers & Cooney, P.C., Des Moines, attorneys for appellee.
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Heard at oral argument
by Badding, P.J., and Chicchelly and Buller, JJ.
Opinion by Chicchelly, J.

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CHICCHELLY, Judge.
Two employee organizations appeal the order granting summary
judgment for a public employer and dismissing their petition to compel
arbitration of a grievance related to discipline of a collective bargaining unit
employee. Because the district court properly applied the law in granting
summary judgment for the public employer, we affirm.
BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
This action stems from a disciplinary action that the Des Moines
Independent Community School District took against a full-time employee.
Des Moines Independent School District Building Trades Maintenance
Council and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union
No. 347 represent the employee for collective-bargaining purposes.1
In July 2023, the school district investigated an allegation that the
employee was under the influence of alcohol while working. It issued a
formal disciplinary letter in September, suspending the employee for thirty
days without pay and setting out conditions for his continued employment.
The employee signed the letter to show he read it and acknowledged receipt
but wrote next to the acknowledgment that he “signed under protest/subject
to grievance.”
The unions’ representative sent a grievance challenging the
employee’s suspension and claiming that the school district violated the
collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that has been in effect since July 2019.
Article X outlines the procedure for grieving alleged violations of the CBA.
The final step of the four-step grievance procedure is binding arbitration.
1 We refer to these organizations collectively as “the unions.”

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The parties completed the first three steps of the grievance process
without resolution. The unions then notified the school district of its intent
to continue to binding arbitration. The school district refused to take part,
claiming that the CBA does not provide for arbitration of disciplinary issues.
In April 2024, the unions petitioned the district court to compel
arbitration under Iowa Code section 20.17(5) (2024) (providing that the
parties to a CBA can bring a civil action to enforce its terms). Six months
later, the unions moved for summary judgment. The district court denied
the motion, holding that the unions failed their burden of proving the CBA
unambiguously subjects disciplinary actions to arbitration.
After discovery, the unions again moved for summary judgment. They
claimed that the definition of “grievance” and the broad language of the
arbitration clause should be read to encompass discipline and that any doubt
should be resolved in favor of arbitration.
The school district also moved for summary judgment, alleging that
the grievance procedure does not apply because the employee’s discipline did
not violate the CBA. It noted that the CBA does not include a “just cause”
provision, address discipline, or incorporate the disciplinary procedures
outlined in the employee handbook. The school district argued that the
presumption of arbitrability applies only when the contract language is
ambiguous and cannot expand arbitration beyond the parties’ express
agreement. Finally, the school district claimed that its participation at the
start of the grievance process was not required but done out of courtesy, and
that absent explicit contractual limitations, the law preserves its managerial
authority.

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The district court agreed with the school district that the CBA’s
grievance procedure only reaches violations of the CBA, which does not
cover discipline or include a just-cause provision. The court granted
summary judgment for the school district, dismissing the petition to compel
arbitration with prejudice. The unions appeal.
SCOPE OF REVIEW
We review a ruling on a motion for summary judgment for correction
of errors at law. See Iowa R. App. P. 6.907; Villarini v. Iowa City Cmty. Sch.
Dist., 21 N.W.3d 129, 133 (Iowa 2025). Summary judgment is appropriate
only if “there is no genuine issue as to any material fact” and the moving
party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Villarini, 21 N.W.3d at 133.
We view the evidence and all legitimate inferences that can be drawn from it
in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Id.
DISCUSSION
The unions challenge the grant of summary judgment, alleging the
district court erred in interpreting the CBA and applying Iowa law. See Iowa
City Cmty. Sch. Dist. v. Iowa City Educ. Ass’n, 343 N.W.2d 139, 141 (Iowa
1983) (“Arbitrability is a legal issue that is to be determined by interpretation
and construction of the parties’ contract.”). The question is whether the
CBA requires arbitration of a grievance about employee discipline. See
Hawkins/Korshoj v. State Bd. of Regents, 255 N.W.2d 124, 127 (Iowa 1977) (“A
party cannot be required to submit to arbitration any dispute which he has
not agreed to submit.”). We look to the CBA to resolve the question. See id.
I. The Law on Arbitrability.
In deciding arbitrability, we consider two questions. Iowa City Cmty.
Sch. Dist., 343 N.W.2d at 141. The first is whether the parties’ agreement has

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a grievance procedure that provides for compulsory arbitration of contractual
disputes. Id. If the answer is yes, we then consider whether the grievance
alleges a violation of a provision of the agreement. Id. Because arbitration is
favored to settle disputes without the expense and delay of litigation, we
resolve doubts in favor of arbitrability “unless it may be said with positive
assurance that the arbitration clause is not susceptible of an interpretation
that covers the asserted dispute.” Id. (citation omitted); accord Ommen v.
Milliman, Inc., 941 N.W.2d 310, 315 (Iowa 2020) (“Doubts about the scope
of arbitrable issues are to be resolved in favor of arbitration.”). This
presumption in favor of arbitration is “a tie-breaking factor for the court to
employ in resolving interpretive disputes that are otherwise in equipoise.”
Lewis Cent. Educ. Ass’n v. Lewis Cent. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 559 N.W.2d 19, 22
(Iowa 1997).
Because the CBA is a written contract, our interpretation focuses on
the written words. See UE Loc. 893/IUP v. State, 997 N.W.2d 1, 9 (Iowa
2023). The goal is “to give a reasonable, lawful, and effective meaning to
every word and every provision” of the CBA. Id. We review the agreement
as a whole and any extrinsic evidence the parties offered as to its meaning.
U.S. Bank, Nat’l Ass’n v. Bittner, 986 N.W.2d 840, 848 (Iowa 2023). If the
meaning of the agreement is plain and unambiguous, we need not look
further. Id.
II. The District Court’s Ruling.
In granting summary judgment for the school district, the district
court began by reading the CBA as a whole and giving effect to each clause.
Although the CBA has a grievance procedure that provides for compulsory
arbitration of contractual disputes, the court found that the subject matter of
the grievance did not allege a violation of the CBA because it does not include

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any articles addressing employee discipline or a just-cause clause. On this
basis, the court held there is no ambiguity under the plain language of the
CBA, which does not require arbitration for employee discipline.
The district court bolstered its analysis of the contract language by
considering contextual evidence and the parties’ course of dealing. The
court noted that Iowa law grants public employers “the exclusive power,
duty, and the right to [h]ire, evaluate, promote, demote, transfer, assign, and
retain public employees” and “[s]uspend or discharge public employees for
proper cause.” Iowa Code § 20.7(2), (3). It next observed that
section 20.9(1) limits the mandatory subjects for bargaining units with less
than thirty percent of members who are public safety employees to “base
wages and other matters mutually agreed upon.” Based on these provisions,
the court held that the Iowa Code “establishes that public employers retain
exclusive authority over disciplinary matters unless they specifically agree to
limit that authority through collective bargaining.” The court found no
evidence that the school district agreed to subject disciplinary matters to the
grievance procedure.2
Finally, the district court found undisputed evidence that the school
district has CBAs with four labor organizations. Of those four, only one
“contains clearly expressed language permitting grievances related to
2 The district court explained that in Lockhart v. Cedar Rapids Community School
District, 577 N.W.2d 845, 848 (Iowa 1998), the supreme court held “the legislature did not
intend to establish a just-cause limitation on the right of a public employer to discharge an
employee” by adopting section 20.7(3). It concluded that the legislature instead intended
to “merely to restate the public employer’s common law right to terminate an employee
at will for any lawful reason.” Lockhart, 577 N.W.2d at 848. Citing Lockhart, the district
court concluded that if the parties had intended discipline to be subject to arbitration, the
CBA would have been “blatantly clear” on that point, but it was not.

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discipline, and even that provision is limited.” The court concluded that the
absence of similar language from the parties’ CBA “supports the conclusion
that disciplinary matters were not intended to be arbitrable.”
III. Analysis.
In applying the arbitrability test to the facts, the answer to the first
question of the arbitrability test is undisputed: the CBA has a grievance
procedure that provides compulsory arbitration of contractual disputes.
Article X of the CBA outlines a four-step grievance procedure, and the fourth
step of the procedure is binding arbitration. Resolution of this appeal thus
turns on the second question of the arbitrability test: whether the grievance
over the employee’s discipline alleges a violation of the CBA.
The district court did not err in analyzing the CBA to find it does not
cover employee discipline. Because section 20.9(1) limits the subjects of the
CBA to “base wages and other matters agreed upon,” the question is whether
the parties mutually agreed to include employee discipline in the CBA. For
two reasons, we find they did not. First, section 20.7(2) and (3) give public
employers exclusive power over employment decisions like hiring, evaluating,
promoting, demoting, transferring, assigning, retaining, suspending, and
discharging employees. If no provision of the CBA addresses employee
discipline, the inevitable conclusion is that the parties did not mutually agree
to include it in their bargaining. Second, the CBA defines a grievance as a
“claim made by an employee that there has been a violation of [the CBA].”
If no provision of the CBA expressly addresses employee discipline, the
grievance cannot allege a violation of the CBA.
The union raises seven claims on appeal, which we briefly address in
turn. First, they allege that the district court erred by improperly relying on
external contracts to infer the parties’ intent. But this claim fails because the

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district court concluded a plain reading of the CBA unambiguously excludes
employee discipline before considering other evidence. The external
evidence the unions cite merely bolstered the conclusion that the court
reached.
The unions next contend that the CBA’s express exclusion of
probationary employees and certain statutory claims from the grievance
procedure show that the parties intended for the CBA to cover
non-probationary employee discipline. Put another way, they claim that
anything that is not expressly excluded is included. But this argument fails
because Article X prohibits arbitrators from amending, modifying, nullifying,
or adding to the CBA’s provisions and requires arbitration decisions to be
“based solely [on] interpretation of the meaning or application of the express
relevant language of the agreement.” (Emphasis added). Nothing can be
interpreted from the absence of an express exclusion.
The unions also contend that the CBA provision expressly allowing
termination of probationary employees “without recourse” creates a
reciprocal right that allows non-probationary employees to grieve discipline.
The unions cite Kerndt v. Rolling Hills National Bank, 558 N.W.2d 410, 416
(Iowa 1997), to support this claim. But that case involved a contract stating
that an employee would not receive compensation if terminated for certain
reasons. Kerndt, 558 N.W.2d at 416. The supreme court held that the
corollary was that an employee terminated for a reason other than those
enumerated would receive compensation. Id. But here, the provision relied
on by the unions states that “[p]robationary employees may be terminated
for any reason without recourse to any procedures in [the CBA].” There is
no corollary between terminated probationary employees and disciplined
non-probationary employees.

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The unions next contend that the district court misconstrued
section 20.7. The cases they cite in support of their argument hold that
section 20.7 does not allow unilateral action on matters that have been made
the subject of collective bargaining. See Dubuque Cmty. Sch. Dist. v. Dubuque
Educ. Ass’n, 315 N.W.2d 847, 851 (Iowa Ct. App. 1981) (“Section 20.7, the
Code, does not retain for the employer a right to act unilaterally on those
matters which have been made the subject of collective bargaining.” (quoting
Ottumwa Educ. Ass’n v. Ottumwa Cmty. Sch. Dist., 297 N.W.2d 228, 232 (Iowa
Ct. App. 1980))). The issue here is that employee discipline was not made
the subject of collective bargaining.
The unions also disagree on how the court applied the presumption in
favor of arbitration. They contend that any grievance alleging a violation of
the CBA requires arbitration unless the school district shows with positive
assurance that the arbitration clause does not cover it and that any doubts
must be resolved in favor of coverage. But our supreme court has held that
the presumption in favor of arbitration is “a tie-breaking factor for the court
to employ in resolving interpretive disputes that are otherwise in equipoise.”
Lewis Cent. Educ. Ass’n, 559 N.W.2d at 22. Because ambiguity is not a factor
in this case, the presumption plays no role in the outcome. Although the
unions contend that the rule from Lewis “conflicts with numerous Iowa cases
such that it is unworkable and should be overturned,” this court is not at
liberty to do so. See, e.g., Nationwide Agribusiness Ins. Co. v. PGI Int’l, 882
N.W.2d 512, 518 n.4 (Iowa Ct. App. 2016).
Because the court may not consider the underlying merits of a claim
when analyzing arbitrability, see State v. State Police Officers Council, 525
N.W.2d 834, 836 (Iowa 1994), the unions next contend that any grievance
that alleges a CBA violation is enough to trigger the grievance procedure. We

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disagree. “Arbitrability may be triggered by a mere allegation of a violation
of a provision of the agreement.” AFSCME/Iowa Council 61 v. State, 526
N.W.2d 282, 283 (Iowa 1995) (emphasis added). But that does not mean that
any allegation of a CBA violation triggers the grievance procedure without
even a cursory review to confirm the truth of that assertion. Holding
otherwise would make the arbitrability test null as most petitions for
arbitration claim a CBA violation. Whether the grievance does in fact allege
that a provision of the CBA was violated is for the court to decide. See, e.g.,
Ottumwa Educ. Ass’n, 297 N.W.2d at 231.
We likewise reject the unions’ claim that the district court erred by
reaching the merits of grievance. The district court’s finding that employee
discipline is not covered by the CBA does not reach the merits of a grievance
alleging a violation of the CBA. Rather, the court’s finding that the grievance
did not allege a violation of the CBA settled that the CBA’s grievance process
is not the proper venue for resolving the dispute over the employee’s
discipline.
IV. Conclusion.
The grievance relates to employee discipline, which is not a matter the
parties mutually agreed to include in their collective bargaining. Because the
grievance does not involve a violation of the CBA, we affirm the order
granting summary judgment and dismissing the petition to compel
arbitration.
AFFIRMED.