Two years of accommodations, 35 job postings, and one offer he never answered
A power plant worker’s silence on a job offer cost him his termination challenge at Oklahoma’s Supreme Court.
The worker, a maintenance technician at the Grand River Dam Authority (GRDA) since 2007, suffered a heart attack in May 2018. His doctor cleared him to return that July - but with restrictions barring exposure to coal dust, ash, and airborne particulate matter. At a coal-fired plant, that ruled out his regular duties.
GRDA did not cut him loose. It moved him to a temporary assignment at another facility, let him keep his old title, and paid him $32.79 per hour - above the $26.22 the role would normally attract. It renewed the arrangement for a second year.
During those two years, GRDA encouraged him to apply for other roles. He applied for one. He did not get it.
When the assignment ended, a fitness-for-duty examination confirmed the restrictions were permanent. GRDA placed him on administrative leave in August 2020 and sent him at least 35 job postings over following months, though few matched his restrictions, qualifications, and pay.
Then came the direct offer. On January 31, 2022, GRDA created a new position at the same facility and offered it at $29.00 per hour. He never asked whether the salary was negotiable. He never responded at all.
GRDA terminated him on March 3, 2022.
The worker challenged the decision through the state’s Office of Management and Enterprise Services (OMES), which upheld the termination. A district court reversed OMES, finding a due process violation. On October 13, the Oklahoma Supreme Court reversed the district court and reinstated the agency’s ruling.
The court held that Oklahoma’s Civil Service and Human Capital Modernization Act does not create a property interest in continued state employment - meaning due process protections do not attach. The Act leaves personnel decisions to agency judgment, prohibiting only those that are “clearly arbitrary or capricious.”
On the merits, the court said the lower court flipped the burden of proof. Under the Act, a terminated employee must prove “no reasonable basis” existed for every ground of termination. The district court had acknowledged facts supporting a reasonable basis - the worker’s permanent restrictions and his refusal of the offer - but then reweighed the evidence. That was not its call.
For public-sector HR teams, the case turns on what happened at the end of a long accommodation trail: the offer went unanswered, the documentation held up, and the termination stuck.
