A partisan clash over nine bills adopted in the last session of the state Legislature, but stuck in procedural limbo was argued Tuesday before the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Attorneys for the Michigan Senate Democratic majority are suing the House GOP majority to get the bills to Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s desk for her to sign or veto.
The bills deal with letting Detroit historical museums seek a regional property tax millage, allowing corrections officers to join the Michigan State Police pension system, increase local government contributions to employee health care costs and prohibiting debt collectors from garnishing public assistance payments.
But the question argued before the three-judge appeals court panel was whether the House is required to release the bills after they were adopted by both chambers.
Transmitting these nine bills to the governor was a final bit of unfinished business this year when the House Democrats handed off the gavel to the new Republican majority.
Mark Brewer, the attorney for the Senate Democrats, said the House GOP leadership has attempted a power grab that violates the Michigan Constitution, which requires all bills adopted by the House and Senate to go to the governor.
“They insist that there’s no deadline, that this duty is completely unenforceable, that it’s simply up to the Legislature to decide,” he said. “That would cause chaos and other problems.”
Brewer argued sending bills adopted by both chambers to the governor is not discretionary, but a required responsibility of the clerks who process legislation. He said the fact that the Legislature adjourned last year before that work was finished is irrelevant.
It is not clear why or how that work was left undone before the new session began in January and the gavel was handed from the Democrats to Republican Speaker Matt Hall, who instructed the clerks to sit on the bills.
Kyle Asher, the attorney for the House Republican majority, argued that it is not the job of the new House administration to finish work left undone by the previous legislature. He also said it would be an error for the appeals court judges to make a decision about how the Legislature manages its internal affairs.
“We have doctrines like the political question to keep disputes within branches at those branches,” he said. The political questions doctrine is a legal principle that holds that disputes in the political realm are typically resolved through a political process, and not by courts. “So, this court should leave it to the Legislature to resolve its own disputes as it's done in every other instance in the past,” said Asher.
A Michigan Court of Claims judge ruled in February that, legally, the House should send the bills to Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But Judge Sima Patel declined to issue a court order to enforce her decision.
Before the appeals court hearing, a group of union workers held a rally outside the building that the houses the Detroit court offices.
“It’s unconstitutional,” said Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Beiber of the House action. “We cannot have a Michigan Constitution or a Legislature (where) one guy who thinks he has the power to just do whatever we want. You kind of see that at the national level with Trump and I don’t think we want that here.”
There is no deadline for the appeals court panel to make a decision and what it decides will almost certainly be challenged by the losing side before the Michigan Supreme Court.
