A county employee's duties quietly expanded. A filing error made all the difference
A New York court just ruled that doing your boss's job – without your boss's pay grade – is out-of-title work HR can't ignore.
Lisa Theopheles was a supervising support investigator – a grade 15 title – in the child support unit of the Rensselaer County Department of Social Services. After the abrupt resignation of the unit's grade 20 supervisor in August 2019, it was undisputed that she took over supervision of the entire child support unit. That was work above her grade. She filed a grievance under the collective bargaining agreement between the county and the United Public Service Employees Union, arguing she had been assigned out-of-title work without the corresponding pay.
Out-of-title work, under New York's Civil Service Law, is straightforward in principle: you cannot routinely assign an employee the duties of a higher-grade position without a matching increase in pay, except in a genuine emergency. The legal question is whether the extra duties genuinely fall within an employee's existing title, or are a reasonable extension of it.
The county argued that full-unit supervision was already covered by Theopheles's grade 15 job description. An arbitrator sided with the county in 2021. The trial court agreed, relying on a county document – a "New Position Duties Statement," or MSD-222 form – that described the grade 15 role as including supervision of child support unit employees generally.
On June 4, 2026, the Appellate Division, Third Department reversed. The critical problem was procedural: that form had been submitted as part of the county's application to reclassify the position, but the Civil Service Commission never signed it. The job specifications that were actually approved confined the grade 15 role to supervising the investigative functions of the unit – with no mention of responsibility for the unit as a whole. The court found the unsigned form was nothing more than evidence of the county's failed attempt to fold a broader supervisory duty into the reclassification. Without a formally approved description, there was no rational basis for the county's position. The determination was annulled and the matter sent back to the department.
For HR leaders, the lesson is about process discipline. A job description means only what the official approval process certifies it to mean. If you expand a role – particularly in a public-sector or unionized environment – the new duties need to be formally adopted and signed off, not just drafted into an internal form. When an employee absorbs a departing manager's responsibilities, the gap between what they actually do and what their title officially covers is exactly where out-of-title pay claims are born. A form that was drafted but never finalized will not protect the organization – and may become the evidence that undoes its defense.
