Key Points

  • The Oklahoma Supreme Court held that 62 O.S. ยง 34.301, part of the 2021 Civil Service and Human Capital Modernization Act, does not create a property interest in continued state employment.
  • Because the act creates no property interest, the Due Process Clauses do not apply to terminations under it, and the court reversed the district court's ruling that the act's post-termination hearing framework is unconstitutional.
  • A state employee challenging a firing under the act must prove that every basis for the termination was unreasonable, and the district court erred by asking whether the firing was unreasonable overall.
  • The district court violated the Oklahoma Administrative Procedures Act standard of review by reweighing the evidence, including by relying on an alleged ADA violation that OMES has no authority to adjudicate.
  • The court reinstated the OMES order upholding the Grand River Dam Authority's termination of Michael Turner without remand.

Oklahoma's 2021 civil service law does not give state employees a constitutionally protected property interest in keeping their jobs, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held on Tuesday. The ruling reverses a Mayes County district judge who had struck down the law's post-termination hearing procedures as a violation of due process.

Justice Jett wrote for the court, joined by seven other justices. Vice Chief Justice Kuehn concurred in the result. The decision reinstates a final order of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, the state agency whose Civil Service Division hears fired workers' complaints, that upheld the Grand River Dam Authority's 2022 dismissal of Michael Turner, a power plant maintenance technician who could not return to his job after heart surgery.

The case required the court to decide whether the Civil Service and Human Capital Modernization Act, which replaced the Oklahoma Personnel Act, protects public jobs the way the older law did. The court held that it does not. A fired worker under the 2021 act is therefore entitled only to the procedures the statute and its rules provide, and the court found that the Legislature did not intend to create a property interest "for the vast majority of Oklahoma's 31,000 state employees."

Turner had worked for the authority since 2007 and suffered a heart attack in May 2018. His doctor barred exposure to coal dust and ash, which kept him out of his coal-fired plant. The authority placed him on a two-year temporary assignment at its Pensacola Dam facility at his old pay of $32.79 an hour, and a later examination found his restrictions permanent.

In January 2022, the authority created a Technician Senior position at Pensacola Dam that, the opinion says, undisputedly fit his restrictions, at a starting wage of $29.00 an hour. Turner never asked whether the pay was negotiable and did not respond to the offer. The authority fired him on March 3, 2022, writing that he "did not accept this offer of accommodation."

An administrative law judge upheld the firing, and the agency adopted that ruling. The district court reversed. It held that Turner had a property interest because "[s]ome proof that a reasonable basis exists for the adverse action is required to be established regardless of which party has the assigned burden of proof," and it sent the case back to the agency for more evidence.

A property interest in a public job, under the precedents the court applied, exists only when a statute or regulation substantively restricts the employer's power to fire, for example by requiring just cause. The court held that the 2021 act imposes no such restriction. The statute requires the fired employee to "prove that there was no reasonable basis" for the discipline, and the court held that a burden of proof does not limit the employer.

"The result in this case is even more straightforward than Hall," Justice Jett wrote, referring to Hall v. O'Keefe, a 1980 decision holding that a law letting a city manager fire police officers "for the good of the service" created no property interest. The trial court, he wrote, had turned the employee's burden into "a criterion that all terminations must qualify as reasonable. But that is not what the statute says."

The court also rejected the district court's reliance on the act's right to file a post-firing complaint. "The test is not whether an employee is given the opportunity to lodge a post facto complaint, but whether an employer's discretion in personnel decisions is substantively restricted," Justice Jett wrote. The court distinguished its 2014 decision in Oklahoma Public Employees Ass'n v. Oklahoma Military Dep't, which found a property interest under the repealed Personnel Act's list of firing grounds ending in "any other just cause."

"It is within the Legislature's prerogative to grant (or take away) property interests in continued state employment," the court wrote. It added that the law's termination procedure was itself "inconsistent with the existence of a property interest," because an employee who holds that interest is entitled to a hearing before termination.

On the merits, the justices held that the district court misread Turner's burden. An employee must show that every basis for termination was unreasonable, the court held, but the trial judge had asked whether the firing was unreasonable overall. The judge had written that, "[t]aken in a vacuum," the firing "could be determined reasonable" based on Turner's restrictions and his refusal of the January offer. "The district court's acknowledgement that there are facts that establish a reasonable basis for terminating Mr. Turner should have ended the analysis," Justice Jett wrote.

The court further held that the district court improperly reweighed the evidence under the Oklahoma Administrative Procedures Act, which governs court review of agency orders and bars a judge from substituting the court's judgment for an agency's on the weight of the evidence. The trial judge had faulted the authority for failing to follow the interactive accommodation process under federal Americans with Disabilities Act regulations. "That the district court placed any weight on this evidence is legally suspect because OMES has no statutory authority to adjudicate ADA claims," the court wrote.

Lawyers for the Grand River Dam Authority included Randall E. Long of Rhodes, Hieronymus, Jones, Tucker & Gable, P.L.L.C. The Office of the Attorney General represented the agency and Attorney General Gentner Drummond. Turner was represented by Daniel J. Gamino of Daniel J. Gamino & Associates, P.C.

The court reversed outright, holding that there "was no basis for the district court to remand this case to OMES for more process." The agency order upholding Turner's termination now stands. The opinion, cited as 2026 OK 74, carries a notice that it has not been released for publication and remains subject to revision or withdrawal until then.