Court Opinion

ID: 9663169
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:30:18.294024+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:46.224204
License: Public Domain

SIMONETT, Justice
(concurring specially)-
“[I]f the employer’s action is reasonable,” says the majority opinion, “then the board can modify the sanction only if it finds extenuating circumstances.” This may suggest the public employer, in acting reasonably, does not consider extenuating circumstances. This is not, however, what I understand the majority opinion to be saying.
Presumably, in choosing to discharge an employee rather than to impose some lesser discipline, the public employer has duly considered and weighed in the balance any circumstances which either extenuate or enhance the seriousness of the employee’s misconduct or incompetency.
Only if the public employer seeks to remove an employee by discharge or demotion is a Veterans Preference Board hear*803ing activated, and the public employer must then prove its case to the Board. In making its decision, the Board makes findings of fact. Based on these findings, which cover not only the specific misconduct or incompetency but also any extenuating and enhancing circumstances, the Board then determines the reasonableness of the proposed sanction. Or to put it another way, the Board considers whether the public employer’s choice of the sanction of removal is a reasonable exercise of the public employer’s discretion.
If the Board concludes discharge or demotion was not reasonable, the Board may set the sanction aside. May the Board then fix a lesser discipline or must it remand to the public employer to do so? The question is not free from doubt. Under our prior case law, however, it is settled that an established Veterans Preference Board has the power to modify sanctions; in the interests of consistency, we should hold, as we do, that an ad hoc board has the same power.
On judicial review, the court should review the findings of fact to determine if they are supported by substantial evidence, see State ex rel. Jensen v. Civil Service Commission, 268 Minn. 536, 538, 130 N.W.2d 143, 146 (1964), cert. denied, 380 U.S. 943, 85 S.Ct. 1023, 13 L.Ed.2d 962 (1965); and the reasonableness of the Board’s imposed sanction should be reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard.
In this case, misconduct was established by substantial evidence. The Board’s supplemental findings seeking belatedly to characterize the sexual harrassment as nonserious do not have substantial eviden-tiary support. Considering the seriousness of the misconduct, its adverse impact on the workplace and on a coemployee, its potential for civil rights claims against the employer, and the lack of any counterbalancing extenuating circumstances, the public employer’s discharge of the veteran was reasonable. Consequently, the discharge must be allowed to stand.