The Michigan Supreme Court has decided to consider an appeal filed by Governor Snyder regarding the "3% retirement" case. This is an appeal of the Michigan Court of Appeals' directive that the State of Michigan refund--with interest--the money involuntarily withheld from the paychecks of all public school employees under a 2010 amendment to the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement Act.
From July 2010 through January 2013, the salary of every public school employee was involuntarily reduced by 3% to pay for post-employment retiree health care of persons already retire--even though current employees had no guarantee that they would receive health care when they retired. AFT Michigan challenged the validity of this law and has prevailed at every stage of this litigation--now seven years old. We won at the Court of Claims and twice in the Court of Appeals. Unfortunately, the Michigan Supreme Court now wants to weigh in about a matter on which the lower courts have spoken clearly: the 3% extraction was unconstitutional.
AFT Michigan will make a vigorous argument that the Supreme Court should not reverse the Court of Appeals and that the money forcibly taken from public school employees should be refunded.
It is expected that the matter will be argued before the Supreme Court late in 2017 with a decision not likely until 2018.