LANSING (AP) — A divided Michigan Supreme Court declined Wednesday to rule early on the constitutionality of Republicans’ lame-duck maneuver to weaken voter-proposed minimum wage and paid sick leave laws, saying the laws have already taken effect.
In a 4-3 decision, the justices said they were not persuaded that granting lawmakers’ request for a rare advisory opinion would be an appropriate exercise of the high court’s jurisdiction.
Instead, they wrote, the court should wait until a lawsuit is filed and reaches them.
In July, justices heard arguments about “adopt and amend,” a strategy that majority Republicans used last year.
To prevent minimum wage and sick time ballot drives from going to the electorate in November, after which they would have been much harder to change if voters had passed them, GOP legislators approved them in September so that they could be made more business-friendly after the election with simple majority votes and the signature of the outgoing Republican governor, Rick Snyder.
Dissenting justices said the court should have ruled now because the House asked for the advisory opinion well before the laws took effect in late March.
Giving such an opinion could potentially have avoided a lengthy legal fight.
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