TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The former Florida Department of Health employee responsible for building the COVID-19 data dashboard is officially a whistleblower under Florida law, the Miami Herald reports.
Rebekah Jones made headlines after she was ousted from the health department earlier in the pandemic.
If you ask the state, it says she was asked to resign due to insubordination, but Jones alleges she was fired after she was asked to manipulate coronavirus numbers on the Department of Health's dashboard.
Jones filed a formal whistleblower charge of discrimination with the Florida Commission on Human Relations in July 2020.
According to a press release, the documents filed allege the Department of Health retaliated against Jones by terminating her employment after she says she went to her supervisor for assistance on blowing the whistle on dashboard misconduct.
It also touches on her "opposition to her supervisors’ requests to falsify data on a public website, which represents an immediate injury to the public health, safety, and welfare, including the possibility of death to members of the public, in violation of Florida law."
On Friday, Jones tweeted that the state of Florida determined her to be a "bona-fide #whistleblower."
She shared a photo of an email that read, "After having had the opportunity to review your concerns, this office has determined the information disclosed does meet the criteria for whistleblower status..." The email came from the Office of the Inspector General, according to the Miami Herald.
Whistleblower status offers people certain protections under state law. This includes possible reinstatement of the employee's former position or compensation for lost wages and benefits if it's found that an agency took "retaliatory action against any person who discloses information."
According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Jones illegally accessed a state emergency alert system and sent a mass text message that was delivered to roughly 1,750 people before a software vendor was able to stop the text.
Jones has publicly denied such claims.
The Nov. 10 message said: "It's time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead. You know this is wrong. You don't have to be part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it's too late."
According to the arrest warrant, the investigation revealed two other text messages were sent on Nov. 10. The warrant says one of them, which was sent to an individual, read "It's time to speak out before another 17,000 are dead. Text Rebekah - From: State ESF8.Planning."
Authorities say they linked the IP address to Jones, who was living in Tallahassee at the time but has since moved to Washington, D.C. As investigators write, they soon realized, Jones had been terminated about six months earlier on May 25.
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