Brenner v. Governor's Office of Employee Relations

# Brenner v. Governor's Office of Employee Relations Summary ## What Happened Brenner, an employee at the Office of Mental Health, was assigned work outside his job title. He filed a grievance, arguing these out-of-title assignments violated employment rules. The lower court dismissed his case, but Brenner appealed. ## What the Court Decided The appellate court partially sided with Brenner. The court said the lower court was wrong to dismiss the case entirely. It sent the case back for a new review to determine whether Brenner's out-of-title work assignments (taking up 1-18% of his time) were truly "occasional and infrequent" as rules allow. However, the court upheld the dismissal of his grievances about lower-grade work assignments. ## Why This Matters for Workers This ruling clarifies that employers cannot assign workers to jobs outside their title regularly without limit. While occasional assignments are permitted, the court required actual examination of whether assignments were truly temporary and rare. This protects workers from being routinely used in different roles without proper compensation or job classification changes.