LANSING — The Michigan Supreme Court will not wade into a school safety funding debate that has pitted nearly three dozen school districts against the state Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The order leaves in place language included in last year’s budget that tied about $321 million in school safety funding to a mandate that schools agree to waive attorney-client privilege in the event of a mass casualty event, such as a school shooting.
About three dozen school districts challenged the language after passage of the state budget last year and were unsuccessful in the lower courts. The high court’s refusal to take up the case means those lower court rulings and the budget provision remain in place.
In a brief order Thursday, the high court said it was “not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.” That language is commonly used by the Michigan Supreme Court to decline a case.
An attorney representing the school groups challenging the law did not immediately return a call Monday seeking comment.
Whitmer celebrated that the decision protected the budget’s “critical investment in school safety and student mental health,” while also maintaining “much-needed clarity for schools and communities across Michigan.”
“Last year, we made the largest investment in our state’s history to help schools keep kids safe, from hiring more mental health professionals and school resource officers to improving security and crisis planning,” Whitmer said. “It also increased transparency to give parents greater certainty.”
A separate federal case filed by the schools over the same issue has been paused while the state court case played out.
Whitmer’s 2027 fiscal year budget recommendation includes the same language linking school safety funding to an agreement to waive attorney client privilege. The Democratic governor, Republican-led House and Democratic-led Senate are currently negotiating a final version of the annual budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
The roughly $321 million in tax dollars set aside for school safety and mental health initiatives in the state’s spending plan last year required schools to waive the attorney-client privilege in the event of a mass casualty event and to comply with a comprehensive investigation into the casualties.
The language was meant to address problems that arose following a shooting that took the lives of four teens and wounded six students and a teacher at Oxford High School in 2021. During subsequent internal probes of the Oxford shooting, investigators and parents seeking answers were often hampered when administrators and employees remained silent by citing attorney-client privilege.
Some of the districts challenging the language include the Macomb Intermediate School District, Warren Consolidated Schools, Wayne RESA, Oakland Schools, Traverse City Area Public Schools, Kalamazoo RESA and the Eastern Upper Peninsula Intermediate School District.
The Ingham Intermediate School District was among the education agencies challenging the language. Only three districts in Ingham County − East Lansing Public Schools, Haslett Public Schools and Lansing School District − opted into the funding, according to a data shared by the Michigan Department of Education. Other Lansing area districts opting in included Potterville Public Schools, Waverly Community Schools, DeWitt Public Schools, Pewamo-Westphalia Community Schools, St. Johns Public Schools, Portland Public Schools and Ithaca Public Schools.
The language, the schools argued in the federal lawsuit, requires school districts “to make an impossible choice: either forfeit hundreds of thousands –– or even millions –– of dollars essential for student safety and mental health, or surrender fundamental constitutional rights through a vague, overbroad, and coercive blanket waiver of ‘any privilege’ with unknown limitation.”
Specifically, the schools argued in the federal lawsuit that language requiring a waiver of privilege is “unconstitutionally vague” and fails to clearly define “privilege” and “mass casualty” event.
“The provision, therefore, could arguably be triggered by a single tragic incident, such as a building defect or collapse that causes the deaths of multiple workers or school property, a bus accident involving students or staff, or a severe weather event leading to multiple casualties on school grounds,” the federal lawsuit said.
Michigan Court of Claims Judge Sima Patel, in her Dec. 17 decision on the state suit, dismissed claims that the language imposed by the Legislature was too vague or that it unconstitutionally waived privilege for individuals within the district.
The language “is coercive,” Patel acknowledged, “but it does not coerce the relinquishment of a constitutional right in exchange for essential public funding.”
The Lansing State Journal contributed. eleblanc@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: High court spurns lawsuit over strings attached to school safety spending
Reporting by Beth LeBlanc, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Beth LeBlanc, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
