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After a year and a half of contesting the way she was fired, a former Davison County veterans service officer now plans to take her case to the South Dakota Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, Judge Patrick Smith issued a memorandum decision ruling that the South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation correctly granted summary judgment to the county commission in November 2018 and that the commission’s decision to terminate Jessica Davidson in November 2017 stands.

Davidson’s attorney, R. Shawn Tornow, told The Daily Republic on Thursday that Davidson had a number of concerns with the decision.

“With all due respect to the court, we believe there are issues here that need to be fully addressed under her constitutional rights to due process,” Tornow said. “Jessica’s going to exercise her right, after she’s reviewed the decision, to appeal that to the South Dakota Supreme Court.”

Davidson began working as the county’s VSO in December 2014 and was appointed to a four-year term beginning on Jan. 3, 2016. In November 2017, State Secretary of Veterans Affairs Larry Zimmerman sent a letter to the Davison County Commission recommending Davidson be terminated. On Nov. 28, 2017, commissioners met with Davidson and told her about the letter, then terminated her. The commission formally made a motion to terminate on March 20, 2018.

Tornow said one issue Davidson had with Smith’s decision was that it didn’t address whether she was entitled to back pay for the time between Nov. 29, 2017, when she was terminated, and March 20, 2018, when formal action to terminate her was taken during a county commission meeting.

The county maintained at a June 18 hearing that Zimmerman’s recommendation was grounds enough for legal termination. Smith wrote in his decision that “employees are retained at-will and can be terminated at any time” and “not all consequences for violation of employer policy give rise to a grievance procedure, and termination is nowhere defined in the Personnel Policy Manual as triggering any right to a hearing.”

Tornow said he believes part of the issue with that reasoning is that Davidson, who had been appointed for a term of years, was not an at-will employee, entitling her to certain grievance procedures he said were not applied as required by the Davison County Personnel Policy Manual.

“(Davidson) is distinctly different in that she was appointed for a term of years. That’s a very integral part of her due process claim,” Tornow said. ” … My client is simply looking for her day in court under the grievance procedure that was applicable to her as a non-at-will employee, and she’s entitled to due process.”

Tornow said it’s not uncommon for administrative appeals cases such as Davidson’s to go before the Supreme Court.