LANSING (WWJ) – Michigan’s minimum wage is staying put at $10.10 per hour, for now, after the State Court of Appeals overturned a ruling from last summer that said the legislature’s adopt-and-amend procedure in 2018 was unconstitutional.
A unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel on Thursday blocked the state’s minimum wage from jumping to $13.03 next month. Minimum wage for tipped workers were also poised to skyrocket from $3.75 to $11.73.
Last July a Michigan Court of Claims judge ruled the legislature can’t adopt and amend a petition initiative in the same legislative session, which is what happened in 2018.
That year petitions circulated by Michigan One Fair Wage and MI Time to Care – which sought to require employers to offer paid sick time – destined to make it to voters in November until lawmakers stepped in just two months before the election.
The One Fair Wage initiative would have bumped the state’s minimum wage from $9.25 per hour to $12 by 2022. Instead, the legislature created the Improved Workforce Opportunity Wage Act, which slowed the institution of a higher minimum wage, calling for it to gradually increase to $12.05 per hour by 2030 – eight years later than the original proposal.
Court of Appeals Judge Christopher Murray said in Thursday’s opinion “because there are no limitations with respect to the amendment of initiated laws beyond the initial 40-session day period for legislative action, the Legislature is free to amend laws adopted through the initiative process during the same legislative session.”
Lawyers for the groups that backed the ballot initiatives are planning to take the case to the Michigan Supreme Court.
While Judge Michael Kelly was one of the three who agreed on Thursday’s ruling, he said in a concurring opinion that the Republicans’ adopt-and-amend tactic was “anti-Democratic.
"Although this procedure is permissible under the language of our constitution, this ploy — adopting an initiative into law so as to prevent it from going onto the ballot and then promptly and substantially amending that law in a manner that has left it essentially defanged — is anti-democratic," Kelly Wrote in the concurring opinion. "I cannot believe that this drastic action is what the drafters of our constitution even contemplated, let alone intended."
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