I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Chief Justice Cliff Taylor worked his final day on the state Supreme Court last week. The woman who defeated him, Diane Hathaway, will be sworn in this week and the balance of power on the court should shift as a result.
Taylor was a conservative icon both in Michigan and around the nation and had served on the state’s high court for more than eleven years. His defeat in the November election by an opponent he outspent by a wide margin was a major shock to the Michigan political establishment.
Taylor had enormous support from the business community. He voted consistently in favor of corporate interests across the board, whether the case involved environmental concerns, regulatory matters or civil rights issues. His replacement by the more liberal Hathaway is widely expected to make the court less beholden to corporate defendants.
Republicans still hold a 4-3 advantage on the court, but like the U.S. Supreme Court there is a key swing justice that tends to vote with different blocs. That justice is Elizabeth Weaver, a moderate Republican who has long been a vocal critic of Taylor. She tends to vote like a law-and-order conservative on criminal cases, but is seen as much more supportive of plaintiffs suing corporations over environmental matters, worker’s rights, personal injury and discrimination cases.
In fact, Taylor expedited the release of a number of opinions during his final month on the term ahead of schedule on cases heard by the court in October. Many of those rulings were 4-3 in a variety of cases involving individual plaintiffs against corporate defendants. 7 out of 19 rulings released this between the election and Taylor’s last day of the term, according to the Associated Press, had Taylor in the majority along with three other Republicans and Weaver and the two Democrats on the court in the minority.
The arrival of Hathaway on the court may well have shifted those rulings in the other direction, a change that should manifest itself in similar cases over the next few years.
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