There has been a legal fight going on in Michigan ever since State Representative Tim Kelly, a Saginaw Township Republican who chairs the K-12 budget subcommittee, pushed to include $2.5 million in funding in the recent budgets to help private schools pay for the “actual costs” of the state mandates that have nothing to do with instruction.

These state mandates are for the health and safety of the children and have nothing to do with teaching the children.

The Detroit News is reporting on the In a 2-1 decision, judges William Murphy and Anica Letica, a Democrat ruled that state funding to reimburse private schools for complying with health and safety laws is not inherently unconstitutional despite a ban on public aid for private education.

The judges stated that:

the funding must be “incidental” to teaching and providing educational services, cannot support a “primary” function critical to the school's existence and must not involve or result in “excessive religious entanglement,” they said in devising a new three-part test.

The Michigan Constitution prohibits the state from appropriating public monies or property to:

directly or indirectly to aid or maintain any private, denominational or other nonpublic, pre-elementary, elementary, or secondary school.

You will be interested in hearing what the dissenting judge said about any funding to private schools.

Court of Appeals Judge Elizabeth Gleicher, a democrat, accused her fellow colleagues of “hijacking” the concept of incidental aid.  She believed they were attempting to create a new exception to the “plain language’ in the state Constitution.  Judge Gleicher believes that the wording in the Michigan Constitution prohibits direct or indirect aid to non-public schools.

What I found most interesting is Judge Elizabeth Gleicher wrote in her dissent the following:

The public money directly and indirectly assists nonpublic schools in keeping their doors open and meeting their payroll…It is unconstitutional for that simple reason.

Is that not exactly what people on the right say about more than a ½ a billion dollars, that is more than $500 million, given to Planned Parenthood each year by our congress?  That Planned Parenthood taxpayer money does “directly and indirectly assists” Planned Parenthood “in keeping their doors open and meeting their payroll”.

Someone should ask the Judge what her response to that would be.  Interesting when they defend one action for one group but not the other.  Is this the type of legal system and judges you want to face in court?  Keep voting for the left and you might someday find yourself in front of a judge that has a different ideologue than you and good luck my friend.  It would be unfair for you to believe that judges appointed by Democrats can make decisions based on who is in front of them and judges appointed by Republicans cannot.  I want to believe in the rule of law and not have to worry about a judge’s politics and emotions to try my case.

I believe the phrase is what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

The Court of Appeals sent the case back down to the Court of Claims to consider the constitutionality of each mandate individually.   They went on to say that if the Court of Claims determines a specific cost or action is unconstitutional, “it may only strike or preclude that reimbursement without invalidating the entire statute, the majority ruled.”

All political ideologues in the United States need to demand that the judges rule by law not emotion or political ideology, that unfortunately is not the way we seem to be going.

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