what is protected section five does not even use the word pension section five provides that the benefits of membership in a state pension over time and system are contractual right quote specifically has benefits include health insurance in previous cases this court has said that section five is plain and this court has said over and over that if a meaning of a statute  clear that it needed no further elaboration in the official explanation given to voters concerning the one nine hundred seventy constitution they said this section is new and self explanatory and soreness of the word benefits is a word in common usage in the employment context everyone understands what it means to an internet search for a job with benefits or the person in this dream job with benefits means drive down the highways we've done and you'll see signs that say now hiring a job with benefits everyone knows that means such things as health insurance in the dictionary he cited a brief benefit is defined to include such things as health insurance but the best source of section five meaning is the understanding of the voters who voted for the constitution common sense tells us that borders would have understood the term benefits to include such things as health insurance but we're seeing on the text of section five by choosing the term benefits the drafters chose to protect not just pensions but they're all benefits of membership in a pension or retirement system there would be no reason to use the term benefits if only pensions were to be protected looking beyond the text of the title of section five we further find confirmation that benefits means more than just a pension but title is pension and retirement right if section five are intended to be limited to the pension alone the word retirement would be supposed to us and this court has said over and over that no world should be we should not assume that any word in the statute is used needlessly so benefits have to include more than just a pension the fans who try to argue and distract attention from the simple issue by arguing such things as the general assembly's statutory classification which divides retirement benefits between two different the constitution we have to look to section five and section five makes no such distinction section five says nothing about the source of the benefits that are protected with you the first time in your favor that voters voted on with the benefits and not pensions and so on we the the term benefits is much broader than pensions and so we're not really expanding anything  in the bench and clearly there are multiple articles that have different retirement systems some of the current our pensions pension fund some of them are called retirement system what is that is there a differen the state is roy's retirement system the state university retirement system the teachers retirement system and the judges retirement system and those are what are affected by this ad and all we are asking it with benefit which which retirees workers and retirees have relied on the purpose of this statute is self evident to prevent the general assembly from doing what it tried to do in this statute break the promises made to public employees and retirees promises that they relied on in accepting and continuing their employment benefits that are part of their compensation package benefits the worker and and paid for is documented in our briefs the state has long treated health insurance as one of the benefits associated with retirement under the state's retirement system is it your position that the is there i was talking about the system that provides retirement income and income they were income health insurance benefits income well i broader term than income the the constitutional convention the voters who voted for this chose to protect benefits not pension income or any other kind of income they chose to protect pension benefits  in two of those three cases that where this issue has come up in other jurisdictions the constitutional provision was almost identical except to use the word term accrued benefits and that was to allow the legislature to change bank the plus protects the benefit of membership pension or retirement system is the difference between protecting the benefits of membership and an engine benefits your membership in the system a condition of receiving these benefits so they are linked that is the problem in order for me to have health insurance as a retiring eat i have to be a member of the retirement system so they would vest at the time of the employment but if you hang your hat on the section five that refers to membership in the pension or retirement system isn't there a period of time that x number of years before an employee invests in it the data when the contract was performed with the between the state and the employee well yeah the claims were there when they would have become a member of the pension for the class we're dealing with are people who have vested benefits under this  may become a member on employment but that be entitled to a particular benefit until you've satisfied a certain amount of time but you're still a member of the system and the point is you are locked into whatever benefits were were part of the compensation package that was your package at the time your employment began is that mean that if the benefits increase later on you're not locked into those well you are there that that issues come up in some other cases stand they've said that the benefits can be increased they can't be diminished but in today's climate i can hardly believe that the benefits are going to be increased in the future if the movement is all going to be the other way because the record indicate that there were benefits of change over the period of time during which some of the latest year would have been employe i don't think the record is clear on that your honor but i think the class definitions will take care of it the class definitions are people who were adversely affected by ninety seven six ninety five and so  that automatically includes any of those people who had these vested benefits and whose benefit was in fact reduced in this state but under your argument provided bare bones coverage as long as it paid one hundred percent of people who were employed longer than one yeah that's a nother question as you know this is about premiums this is this the public act i seventy five is about requiring us to pay premiums that we didn't have to pay before and the flipside of that is could they change benefits and then i think that question would require more research and briefing in order to answer that authorit so i don't want to make a commitment on that at this point but it seems to me that logically if there were a substantial diminution of benefits that that would also be a violation of section fi but now i would assume that certain kinds of insurance coverage is can be modified and so forth as long as they're not substantial changes but a substantial reduction in coverage benefits would would also actually your time expired so there's nothing to yield to oh i didn't know they were time separately or anythin the complaint that was filed filed in the power complex case pleads that prior to nine hundred eighty eight all state retirees who were bested in the various retirement systems receive free individual s in the state and put into effect what we call in the briefs the sliding scale of insurance where you accrue the amount of premium that's paid by a crew in service within the state retirement system and at the same time and most of the plaintiffs in the power case are people that were tired under various collective bargaining agreements that added in them this security of benefits during their retirement what i'd like to do is  k some about the a quite departing implications of their situation i'd like to talk some about the statute and the statutory rights that people have an article one section sixteen of and it is our position that those contracts can be enforced by reason of a jewels in the circuit courts of the state under obsession sixteen of the public labor relations which gives the circuit cour general jurisdiction to deal with contracts that are made by public employers and public complaints and if you read the way which of section sixteen you compare to the one which of the federal statute that did the same thing for the sixteen is a little bit different than the language in section three or one but if you compare the syntax of the sentences it's clear that both sections had the same purpose and that was to say in retirees can come to circuit court and enforce the rights that they had a new the contracts that were in effect when they came into retirement now the circuit court and the state have a different view they have contended that there is a sixteen there were farmers to enforce in the contracts between parents and that even though they are called third party beneficiaries retirees do not have the ability to come to court and enforce their rights and then instead at best they might have the right to go to the owner a court of claims and we think that that distinction is not one that supported by the language or the president of  very similar language where the court came to the commonsense conclusion that if you are a third party beneficiary that that is sufficient to bring you in to the coverage of a statute that says the parties to a labor agreement can come to court in aforesaid labor and and if you were to hold all the lines you would really put the state retirees into a separate category and all other cases public retirees were able to come to circuit court to enforce their rights under the n f l systems proffered by the attorney general on and that was adopted by the supreme court below you can only go to the court of claims to enforce threats and we think that now even if you were to reject that argument the retirees would have a valid claim constitutionally under article one section sixteen of the show because they would have a claim that public at ninety seven six ninety five impaired there are quite a party and that's because the defense of the state to a breach of contract claim would be that the statute allows us to do what we're doing and under the definition of impairment that was proffered by the attorney general in their brain by the elimination of the remedy for breach of contract that is a classic definition of a parent you turn to general can see this in the brief then it is possible to create a vested right with respect to a retirement benefits such as insurance and they can see that in an appropriate case there might be imperiled this is the appropriate case because the statute in question is completely removed the remedy better retiree would see if they went to court where are the court to claim circuit court and the issue that you will have to resolve in that case is whether these retirees have a vested right that is protected by statute and i think that this statute is hollow here rucks of what a vested right is it's something that you get by a crew in circles and other words you get more if you have sixteen years and if you have ten years and you get more if you have twenty years than if you have sixteen years number two it is a have consistently protected conversation it is earned at one time and supposed to be paid enough and thirdly if you look at the policy with respect to the retirement clause of the state constitution the policy is to protect people who can no longer go back to the labor force retirement promises are special because you work for the whole in the course of their career and because you can't do anything when they're broken you can't go back to state employees because you retired and it's those expectations that are sort of the essential aspects of what a bastard right is and so we think there's a statutory claim there as well if  well i think this case is unique because what we rely on for the binding promise is the sliding scale statute where the general assembly said this is a benefit that members retirement system are going to receive and so it's not a case where you had some functionary in the department a central mayor smith services make a promise out some meeting  the benefit books that were in existence that were attached to the complaint that form the basis of where we are today in this cause of action had no reservations with respect to the payment of premiums and they contain no way always that sat we can change the premiums in any time we can impose different premiums etc now they might have had language that talked about the you know whether or not you can have a certain procedure covered what your co insurance could be what your deductible might be those might be alterable under the terms of those plan documents those plan documents contain no reservations or rights with respect to the payment premiums these actions and the claims included in them most of those issues i think are fully and fairly addressed in our brief i'd like to focus if i may unless there are any questions on any of the other claims and what i consider to be the  claim aims in this case which relate to the plaintiff's arguments that provisions of the group insurance act constituted a statute that was not just like any other stagey it could be changed by the legislature if it sought if you believe that a policy change was warranted but were vested contractual rights established by a statute that the legislature could not constitutionally change i do want to have maybe thirty seconds or a minute at the very end to address the collective bargaining agreement impairment vs breach issues but most of my time i'd like to devote to this vested contractual status to the statute argument they insist that their latest act here public at ninety seven six ninety five is unconstitutional because it repealed in particular the sliding scale provision of the group insurance act that they say constituted best a contractual right that had a contractual status now the just address that for a minute because i think it's helpful to frame the proper analysis and the beginning point for that analysis is the strong presumption that contracts are presumed not to establish contracts but  merely statutes are intended to establish a policy that the legislature the legislature can change and there's strong policy reasons for that presumption which is the legislature's principle job is to pass laws not to make contracts and there is accordingly no exception to that if the legislature states with unmistakable clarity that intends to create contractual rights the reason for that test which has a great virtue is that we don't want by inadvertence the legislature to be later that they've stumbled backwards into some massive contractual financial liability that binds future legislators so that's the concept there is of course a great temptation always to insist that the statute isn't just a statute that it creates a contract but the virtue of that claim test of unmistakable clarity is to prevent there from being uncertainty and so that when the legislature acts it can know with confidence whether it is related to contract or not  similar factor for policy should inform the court's analysis with respect to the pension protection clause next which i'm going to turn in a minute but looking at the provisions of the group insurance act alleged to be a contract there is in fact nothing in the group insurance act that satisfies that strict standards to establish a contractual status for those provisions there's nothing in the language of the statute that says we intend these to be contracts we intend the legislature not to have the right to change the premium payments to current employees or retirees in the future in fact the irony of this case is that they are insisting that the sliding scale which was an act  hundred seventy has a contractual status when not only had the general assembly previously on multiple times amended the group insurance sector reduced benefits and those are laid out in our brief but also the sliding scale itself increased the benefits for anybody who did not have twenty years of service so it's somewhat ironic to say that the general assembly when it was reducing benefits for health insurance for the third or fourth time intended those somehow to be contractual and not subject to fortune for the reduction and i think the the nail in the coffin of that argument is that public act ninety seven six ninety five itself recognized that there was a provision that was added to the group insurance act at the same time and that there was a quota provision in the in the pension code that said some limited number of s u r s members can make a specific election which itself was contractual to be exempt from the sliding scale contribution but then give up pension rights in exchange for that they know how to make a contract when they want to make a contract and they have done so and there's nothing in the group insurance act that indicates decision in your favor by this or it would mean retirees could be required to pay substantially more at a later point in time or where the retiree health care could be abolished entirely right there is nothing you know long term projections of financial problems for the federal government i don't think so there's a political process that the legislature goes through when they decide what they're going to impose in terms of statutory rights obligations and benefits but is a constitutional matter that is correct i'm sure is there any recourse that you can see for someone who took early retirement sat down and there was a seminar put on by the state in which they were told that they would have  free health care and then the state takes away i mean that's why i went with the example even even take it away that all your presumably their retirement decision was made with the fact that they didn't have to pay for their health care at the time they made any recourse i think there is not in the sense that they would have a constitutional right the early retirement incentive statute that said nothing about medical insurance benefits it said it said that you could bite service credits in your pension system it didn't say that there was anything that was guaranteeing that the current state of state contributions to health insurance was immutable or couldn't changed in the future there were representations made that reflected what the status of the law was at that time our position and i don't want it to sound hard hearted it is that those statements about the state of the law at the time are not fairly characterized as promises that the general assembly could not change them or would not change the law to the extent that there was a statutory bargain laid out in the early retirement incentive program that's contractual and that is being honored but the idea that statements about how the service credits that were bought would play into that then in effect state of the law regarding medical benefits was never a promise so i would say that there wouldn't be a remedy because there was no right to it there was no constitutionally protected obligation and i have addressed i think in fair length the notion that there's some type of enforceable promissory notes promissory estoppel theory either a constitutional magnitude a reader or under common law principles for that and that said i do want to emphasize that at the current time the general simply has kept to a very low level the additional contributions made by people who retirees who whether their reliance were was reasonable or not nonetheless i think we're hoping it at least that there are medical insurance contribution levels wouldn't go up massively you get a fifty thousand dollar your pension in your medicare eligible you're paying about forty one dollars a month now and that's going to go up next  year july first like eighty two dollars a month for a benefit for the individual that cost the state approx twenty five thousand dollars so i don't there's sort of fairness both ways and i think the legislature has has addressed that in a constitutional  of that constitution can somehow be you know pulled apart spawn around thrown into the blender and pasted back together so that you get the idea that benefits can be read in the abstract and all that is required is that   pension because nearly identical stairs hawaii you know their their system was entirely different but i guess i'm sorry why was like illinois being less or it was outside the pension code that they found this benefit created under a totally different statute which i think harkens back to justice freeman's question which is is this a case of first impression in which somebody is arguing that some type of step for a benefit outside the pension code falls within the interpretation of the the pension cause for purposes of giving it a contractual status and i think up position is simply the right court got it wrong you can't take members and separate that from the the language of the clause itself which says and i think it's important to focus on the language the membership in a pension or retirement system of the state shall be an enforceable contractual relationship the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired just as government again asked what's the importance of the freezing membership and if i tell somebody that membership in the state employees retirement system it is a contractual relationship they understand what that means those are the benefits in transit to that retirement system the visa the them is a member and the retirement system which has its separate board pays pension benefits out of the segregated funds of that system that's clear to them they don't think that you can somehow sort of slice and dice that language take the word benefits out of it and say well anything that's a benefit to any person who happens to be a member of that system regardless whether it's in the pension code now somehow acquires a contractually or constitutionally enforceable contractual status that the what the what the plaintiffs are asking this court to do is to give the pension clause a new and expansive interpretation this is essentially trying to put a square peg into a round hole the meaning of the clause based upon the constitutional convention debates and the text of a pause and almost four decades of uniform jurisprudence by this court ha was intended to overturn the non contractual status of public pension systems in which participation was mandatory and there were a couple of systems that where it was voluntary the court had said even before nine hundred seventy those are contractual the purpose of the pause was to say all of the pension and retirement systems and are going to just as perks concept i think there's a concession here that pension and retirement system all mean the same thing their pension retirement systems that are included in the pension c pension code now became contractual and enforceable and the court has huge to that principle it has reinforced it it is said that pension rights are defined by the pension code those are what are subjective protection against being diminished or impaired and you cannot simply take out of the cause itself you can't ignore their history you can't ignore the text and you can't set aside that long constitutional jurisprudence by this court and say well now let's give it a great new you know brand new interpretation because we would like these benefits that are provided outside the pension that aren't pension benefits that are paid for by any of the pension systems that are administered by as pension we love those they have a contractual status i want to remind the court if the legislature wants to create a contractual status for medical health insurance benefits for current employees or retired employees they have the constitutional power to do so but they need to do so explicitly and clearly and in this case the plaintiffs are saying well the legislature may not have intended to do that but let's just accomplish the same result by giving this new expansive interpretation to the pension clause and i think that can't be squared with the language of because it can't be squared with its clear historical purpose and it can't be squared with many cases where this board has interpreted the club's the the differences between the two types of systems reminds me of the old adage that if something you know looks like a dog and walks like a quacks like a duck it must be a duck well for pension benefits administered by a pension system under the pension code that's a fair observation but what we have here is something where we're not talking about pension benefits we're not talking about something that's covered by the pension code and it's not it's not paid for out of funds of any of the pension or retirement systems that are in the pension code so i suppose the corollary to that observation is if it doesn't walk like a duck and it doesn't look like a duck and  the scope of the pension was i think falls upon those many principles now just as freeman had asked is this the first case in which a benefit would be considered to rise outside the scope of the of the pension of the pension code the answer to that is yes there are micus briefs before the court that argued that there was some provision for paying some of the cost of of the premiums of a medical insurance program for city of chicago employees know the intricate history of that but that's a situation in which there was some reference in the pension code itself to something that has some connection to medical insurance benefits what i want to tell the court today is that that issue is not before  should not decide that issue our position is clear i think as to what the meaning of the pension clause has always been but we don't want to take a position nor do we want the court to would to adjudicate claims that are not really before an adversarial basis that are going to be the subject apparently of other litigation that may well wind up here because he uses the phrase pensioner retirement system what's the difference there really i don't think it is any the many of the pension systems at when the when the constitution was adapted were referred to as pension systems many of them were referred to retirement systems some referred to as pension funds some of them referred to as a new defunds  they were role essentially the same thing they granted pension benefits medical insurance benefits were not even in anybody's contemplation at the time and i believe the answer is that they were both intended to have the same meaning now there was a suggestion that the word of a benefits was used and that pension benefits but but that's probably just a recognition that what we traditionally defined as pension benefits that are promised by a pension systems as opposed to regular employment benefits like medical insurance sometimes include payments to a widow or payments to minor dependence upon the death of a number of a member who does have no spouse so occasionally benefits that are not in the nature of a new woodies but they all fall into the same category of us substitution for income when the person stops working that's completely different from the type of insurance program that qualifies as a benefit generally so i don't think special significance can be attached to the constitutional use of the phrase benefits to the point that it would encompass anything that somebody could cause a benefit especially when you consider the rest of the context in which the statute was  written the the other arguments to try and interpret the cause in a in a an expansive and favorable way suggest that maybe the group insurance act is a retirement system i don't think that's a tenable interpretation of the constitution or what the legislature intended when it passed the group insurance act there's a suggestion that the that benefits can be contingent upon membership and that's enough to make them a benefit of membership in a retirement system i think you know our position is clearly that's not what was intended the plain language of the clause following its historical purpose was to take the contractual relationship or to create a contract relationship out of the intrinsic aspects of the rights and obligations of the retirement system of the pension system viz of the of the member and take them away from the status of not contractual because that created the great insecurity by the people of the  time there are and i don't want to spend too much time on it there was a question about vesting by the chief justice there are all sorts of different definitions of vesting besting can be when you're entitled to actually receive an annuity out of the pension system it can be the constitutional definition of when actually you're entitled to the protection of the constitution it can be the contractual meaning with respect to investing that the power plaintiffs are proposing so in this sense the notion of vested contractual status that we're using is a constitutional contractual protection of the statute it used to be that you had to be a state employee for six months before you got that status under the new statute now you get that immediately when you're employed when you're an employee but essentially membership and vesting go hand in hand we don't dispute that just as comair had asked about the history of changes in the group insurance act i hope that i've adequately addressed that pointed out that there's been multiple multiple reductions including before the sliding scale was an active that tended to i think unmistakably reflect an intention by the general assembly that that statute not create any contractually protected rights so if i have been the subject to that the new statute no advise any obligation negates any liability precludes them from any recovery whatsoever and therefore it's an impairment not a breach being answer to that is that's completely wrong that's not correct the state's position is not performant but the statute does not nullify those obligations to clear them to be another tory say that there shall be no recovery or no damages in any court of common jurisdiction it's just a breach not an impairment unless the court has any other so i'd like to hit a couple of the high points one point that i think the court should stay in my keep in mind is i don't think it's right to say that there was a history of constant change in the group individuals for retirees was for it there was a period of time when there were some statutory changes between the time that the changes were in effect there's a concession ready attorney general in its plan or a complaint that no and look in wave the charges for insurance courses the improvements in pensions almost everybody was better off and so the contents of the whole aca to retirement and pensions there was no diminishment or  anybody's rights membership now i think there's an important point here and that is that there were a few people who could read only say you know i'd be better off getting free insurance and having the old pension then being charged for my insurance and when the new pension people with less than twenty years of service and that's why the general assembly a negative specific statute says you can opt out of the new action and that was intended to allow people to keep their free in and nets for better or for worse that's the rule of law the constitutional provision i recall five section thirteen says retirement is different than that when it comes to the pension code if you have to go one step further and say well why did the general assembly do that well they did it because retirement is special retirement special because you work for years and years and years before you get wet retirement especially because the constitution what's the policy is that policy apply to what we're dealing with here which is the creation of a system of insurance now granted there are differences between the state group insurance and that has a ton of people in it that has enormous leverage with providers and which already is set up and so we think that in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight when the general we created the sliding schedule scale on the present system they didn't when it was still what it was creating a retirement a retirement benefit the people could rely on and it did that by modeling the retirement benefit after a pension i eat and if you work you get more of it and by booking it interested this is a member of the system and and as a consequence to come back now fifteen years later and say well the general assembly didn't say we really meant it when they did it i think they didn't really mean it because that's the way they created the benefit now i think justice thomas observation is an important net is that under this statute you can make retired member pay the whole five thousand and under this statute that would be a disaster for most state retirement is because you could because i would eat up probably a good good twenty five percent of your pension and if you look at the statutory right to the director d c m s yes under this it's hard to conclude that anything other th about that what do you make one hundred thousand dollars a year with a make thirty thousand dollars and what the state's position is is that you know we agreed to it in a contract we put it in a statute we hope it up the pension we'll let you a now in the last fifteen seconds of the attorney general's argument they said well the statute doesn't know will find anything and our contrary is all i can say because it's my understanding that their position is that a complete defense to a contract claim is that we have this law that we can rely on people who've already work for these benefits and now they can be taken away i don't know what what anything anything that they can be besides a classic impairment of country and it is an impairment a contract in this case has to go back to the lower court because there are a lot of issues that the lower court never got one an