Legislative Republicans have asked the Michigan Supreme Court to resolve a first-of-its-kind legal dispute that has been playing out for most of the year. The question is whether a court can order the current Legislature to send bills that were adopted in the last session to Governor Gretchen Whitmer to sign or veto.
The House GOP this week asked the state’s highest court to overturn a lower court ruling that all bills adopted by both chambers must be sent to the governor’s desk. The case centers around nine bills adopted last year while the House and Senate were controlled by Democrats. But the bills were never transmitted to the governor before Republicans took control of the House in January.
“If there is any duty at all to present a bill to the governor, that duty must begin and ends with the legislature that passed the bill—not a subsequent and distinct legislative body, which cannot be legally bound by its predecessor or forced to carry out that prior legislature’s unfinished business,” says the House GOP appeal filed with the Supreme Court.
House Speaker Matt Hall (R-Richland Township) has also argued that the Senate does not have standing to sue in this case over a political disagreement between the chambers.
The bills at the center of the case include measures to exempt public assistance payments from debt collection, allow Detroit historical museums to seek voter approval of a millage, and place corrections officers in the same pension system as the Michigan State Police.
Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids) called the appeal “a waste of the court’s time and a distraction from the important work at hand.”
She said dragging out the litigation distracts from efforts to address health care availability and cost-of-living issues for constituents.
“That’s where our focus needs to be,” she said. “But instead, Lansing Republicans are hell-bent on stopping bills that would help firefighters and teachers afford their health insurance and improve retirement benefits for overworked corrections officers. It’s appalling.”
The Supreme Court is not required to take the case and is not bound by any specific timeline to make that decision. If the court declines the case, the Michigan Court of Appeals decision stands.
