Paul Pfeifer
By Paul Pfeifer

The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (OPERS) is – as the name suggests – the retirement system for most public employees in Ohio.

OPERS is vested by law with the authority to determine who, among public employees, is a member of the retirement system. And that decision is final.

But when five former students of Youngstown State University sought a writ against the Board of OPERS challenging a decision on the question of membership, their case eventually made its way before us – the Ohio Supreme Court.

The five former students alleged that they had been employees at YSU, and that they should have been credited with OPERS service time for their employment.

A payroll-department account clerk at YSU looked into the matter and told OPERS that the students had worked for the university as student employees, but had not filed the proper exemption forms for each year of employment.

OPERS originally concluded that the students were OPERS members during the periods for which no form was available and billed YSU for the service in accordance with the law. And the former student employees were credited for OPERS service. But in 2010 an audit turned up additional student-exemption forms for each student. OPERS reversed its previous billing and canceled the student’s associated service credit.

One of the former students – Christine Domhoff – was a YSU employee from January 1, 1982, through June 9, 1984. During the audit, three forms – titled “Acknowledgment of Non-Contributing Status” – were located. It was determined that Domhoff had signed each of the forms. And similar forms were located for the other former student employees, in some instances dating back to the early 1970s.

When the former students filed their writ with the court of appeals, they argued, among other things, that they were not “continuously employed” – at least not within the meaning of the law – because it was YSU’s policy to terminate all student employees at the end of each spring term.

But the court of appeals rejected their arguments. After that, the students brought an appeal before us, raising two issues. The first issue dealt with the question of whether they were continuously employed for purposes of the law. The second had to do with the type of form that was on file with YSU, and whether OPERS may rely on that form to document an exemption.

In reviewing this case, we looked first to the administrative code that governs OPERS. According to that code, a student-employee exemption remains valid until the employment is “terminated.” In other words, only one exemption form is needed if a student employee is “continuously employed.” If a student’s employment was terminated but the student was rehired by the university, the student would have to sign a new form to be exempt from service.

Domhoff and the other former student employees argued that they were not “continuously employed” by YSU because the school’s policy was to terminate the employment of all student employees at the end of every spring semester. Therefore, if they did not request an exemption each time they resumed employment after a summer break, they were OPERS members for the later periods and were entitled to credit in the system for that employment.

OPERS argued that the breaks in employment resulted from the normal cycle of student employment in the school year. OPERS based that argument on two previous court of appeals opinions, both from 1993. In the first of those cases, the court of appeals held that a student employee did not have to file a new exemption for each school year she had worked.

In the other case, the court held that the two- or three-month break in employment in July, August, and September “can be reasonably interpreted as a normal summer break in student employment, which would not constitute a break in continuous employment.”

Therefore, OPERS concluded that the forms filed by the YSU students, even when only one form was filed at the beginning of the first year of employment, made them exempt for the entire time they had worked at YSU.

Domhoff and the other former student employees argued that the two 1993 cases can be distinguished from their situation because the student-employees in each case were never officially terminated, even though each might not have worked during the normal academic breaks. Unlike those cases, the YSU students were terminated according to YSU’s automatic-termination policy, and they asserted that a new exemption form needed to be filed for each school year that they worked in order for the OPERS exemption to be effective.

But, as we noted, while YSU may have terminated students’ employment at the end of an academic year, other colleges might not. YSU’s policy of terminating all student employees at the end of the spring term didn’t alter the fact that following the normal summer break, YSU anticipated the return of many students to the same employment.

OPERS cannot be bound by the policy of one university in making a determination about “continuous” employment for purposes of membership. OPERS has an interest in ensuring that students from state colleges and universities are treated similarly regardless of the internal policies adopted by different schools.

OPERS interpreted the law and the administrative code that governs the retirement system to mean that student employees are “continuously employed” even when their employment is interrupted by the normal breaks of the academic year and even though the university at which they were employed had a policy of terminating student employees at the end of a school year.

Therefore, by a seven-to-zero vote, we determined that the court of appeals was correct in finding that OPERS’s interpretation was reasonable. OPERS was correct in finding that the students needed to sign only one application for exemption from membership in the retirement system at or near the time of their initial employment to be exempt from membership. With that vote, we affirmed the judgment of the court of appeals.

NOTE: The case referred to is: State ex rel. Domhoff v. Ohio Pub. Emps. Retirement Sys. Bd., 140 Ohio St.3d 284, 2014-Ohio-3688. Case No. 2013-1138. Decided August 28, 2014. Opinion Per Curiam.