DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa board has approved payment of nearly $1.1 million in a lawsuit by a former state worker who said the state Natural Resources Department fired him because of a work injury. A judge had ordered the state to pay John Vetter after a jury ruled in his favor in 2015. He’d alleged that the state had not made reasonable accommodations for his work-related back injury and was fired in 2013. Vetter had worked at the agency since 1976.

The state appealed the verdict all the way to the Iowa Supreme Court, which declined in November to hear an appeal of an Iowa Appeals Court decision backing the original verdict. The Des Moines Register reports that the Iowa Appeal Board agreed Tuesday to pay nearly $1.1 million.