Up North Progressive

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled 6 – 0 on December 20, 2017 an unconstitutional law that stripped three percent of teacher pay from Michigan’s public school teachers must be returned. The unconstitutional law imposed by the Republican-controlled State Legislature and Republican Governor Rick Snyder stole over $550 million from teachers’ paychecks in another move to fund Republican tax cuts for corporations in the state.

MEA and AFT sued the state, which put the teachers’ money into an escrow account. The court case lasted for eight years, as Republican Attorney General Bill Scheutte appealed decisions made by lower courts that Public Act 75 was unconstitutional and the money illegally taken from teachers must be returned.

“I cannot imagine a better pre-holiday gift to Michigan’s school employees than getting their hard-earned money returned to them,” said MEA President Paula Herbart. “This is the culmination of years of work by both AFT Michigan and MEA on behalf of our members. This reinforces why being a member of a union matters – working collectively, we won this case that no individual could have fought for themselves.”

How Michigan’s public school teachers will receive their illegally taken pay still needs to be worked out, but today marks the end of 8 years of Republican theft of hard working teachers in order to fund corporate tax cuts.

Score one for the good guys.