Opinion ID: 1349849
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Special Education and Special Education Transportation

Text: Article 9, § 29 indicates, in part: The state is hereby prohibited from reducing the state financed proportion of the necessary costs of any existing activity or service required of units of Local Government by state law. Defendants concede that special education [15] is required by state law. [16] However, they argue that when an activity is required or imposed by federal law, it is not required by state law within the meaning of Const. 1963, art. 9, § 29, citing Schmidt, supra, 441 Mich. at 262, 490 N.W.2d 584 and, by analogy, Sacramento v. California, 50 Cal.3d 51, 266 Cal.Rptr. 139, 785 P.2d 522 (1990). They further argue that the federal requirement is found in three sources: the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EAHCA) (now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education ActIDEA), which provides financial assistance for states that have complying special education programs, 20 U.S.C. § 1401 et seq.; § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C. § 794, which prohibits discrimination against the handicapped in programs receiving federal aid; and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Because we reject defendants' argument that there is an exception in § 29 for federal mandates, we do not address the argument that federal law mandates special education. Plaintiffs argue that defendants are misreading Schmidt. There is no exception in art. 9, § 29 for state mandates that are also subject to a federal mandate, and that such an exception would be contrary to the intent of the electorate in adopting the Headlee Amendment. The Court of Appeals, on second remand, 186 Mich.App at 105, 463 N.W.2d 461, rejected defendants' arguments because state law imposes a stricter obligation on the state and its local units of government and because these governmental entities are charged with the duty of establishing and implementing specific programs and related services.... We first consider and reject defendants' arguments that we recognized a federal exception in Schmidt. We then consider whether we should now recognize such an exception. Defendants do not base their argument for a federal-mandate exception on the language of art. 9, § 29. Rather, they argue that this Court recognized such an exception in part III of our opinion in Schmidt. This part of Schmidt concerned the employer share of federal social security taxes. Before 1989, the state paid the employer share of federal social security taxes for school districts. [17] Beginning in 1989, the state decreased or eliminated that aid. Plaintiffs in Schmidt alleged that this violated art. 9, § 29. We rejected that claim, stating: Plaintiffs sought to frame their social security costs claim as though social security coverage constituted a separate state-required activity or service. However, social security coverage is directly imposed by federal law and therefore not required by state law within the meaning of § 29. Second, social security coverage does not constitute an activity or service within the meaning of § 29. [441 Mich. at 262, 490 N.W.2d 584.] Neither of these reasons help defendants here. First, special education is required ... by state law within the language of art. 9, § 29. [18] Second, special education is an activity or service within that provision. [19] The question remains whether there is such an exception. In deciding that question, we are guided by very basic rules of constitutional interpretation. In Traverse City School Dist. v. Attorney General, 384 Mich. 390, 405, 185 N.W.2d 9 (1971), we stated that the primary rule of constitutional interpretation is the rule of common understanding described in 1 Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (8th ed.), p. 143: A constitution is made for the people and by the people. The interpretation that should be given it is that which reasonable minds, the great mass of the people themselves, would give it. `For as the Constitution does not derive its force from the convention which framed, but from the people who ratified it, the intent to be arrived at is that of the people, and it is not to be supposed that they have looked for any dark or abstruse meaning in the words employed, but rather that they have accepted them in the sense most obvious to the common understanding, and ratified the instrument in the belief that that was the sense designed to be conveyed.' (Cooley's Const. Lim. 81). Chief Justice Cooley also stated for this Court: [I]n seeking for its real meaning, we must take into consideration the times and circumstances under which the State Constitution was formedthe general spirit of the times and the prevailing sentiments of the people. Every constitution has a history of its own which is likely to be more or less peculiar; and unless interpreted in the light of this history, is liable to be made to express purposes which were never within the minds of the people in agreeing to it. This the court must keep in mind when called upon to interpret it; for their duty is to enforce the law which the people have made, and not some other law which the words of the constitution may possibly be made to express. [ People v. Harding, 53 Mich. 481, 485, 19 N.W. 155 (1884).] So, the question is whether the great mass of the people would have meant the following language to convey an exception for state mandates that are also federal mandatesor whether such an exception is a dark and abstruse meaning: The state is hereby prohibited from reducing the state financed proportion of the necessary costs of any existing activity or service required of units of Local Government by state law. A new activity or service or an increase in the level of any activity or service beyond that required by existing law shall not be required by the legislature or any state agency or units of Local Government, unless a state appropriation is made and disbursed to pay the unit of Local Government for any necessary increased costs. The provision of this section shall not apply to costs incurred pursuant to Article VI, Section 18. [Const. 1963, art. 9, § 29.] There is certainly nothing in the language to suggest to the reader that there is an exception for federal mandates. Nothing in § 29 relieves a local unit of government of its state-mandated duty to provide an activity, here special education, if federal law creates a similar obligation. The state statutes requiring special education, M.C.L. § 380.1701 et seq.; M.S.A. § 15.41701 et seq. do not refer to, and are not dependent on, the corresponding federal law. If the federal government rescinded the IDEA, Michigan school districts would still have an obligation to provide special education under state law. These services are required independently by state law. There are, moreover, three suggestions in the language of § 29 and other provisions of the Headlee Amendment that the voters did not intend an exception for federal mandates: (1) § 29 itself contains one exception to its coverage, costs pursuant to art. 6, § 18 (on judicial salaries); (2) the revenue and tax limit on state government in § 26 is subject to three listed exclusions, federal aid, principal and interest on bonds, and loans to school districts [20] ; and (3) the definition of total state revenues in § 33 is all general and special revenues, excluding federal aid.... It seems very unlikely that the voters would have thought that § 29 implied such a huge exception as one for federal mandates when the section specified only one very trivial exception (judicial salaries). It is even more unlikely that the voters would have thought the role of the federal government too obvious to mention in § 29, when the amendment mentions that very topic in §§ 26 and 33. While defendants urge a federal-mandate exception only for § 29, that argument has further implications that provide insight. The rationale for having a federal-mandate exception would be that the state had no free choice in passing the parallel state mandate. [21] However, there would be no reason not to apply that same rationale (1) on behalf of local governments who might seek to raise taxes without a vote of the people to pay for a federal or state mandate, contrary to the language of § 31, and (2) in favor of the state if it sought to exceed the tax and revenue limits of § 26 because of federal mandates. If there is one thing that is clear from the language of the Headlee Amendment and the historical context in which it was passed, it is that the voters intended to limit taxes. Thus, accepting defendants' argument here could eventually cause us to prune away the wide branches of the Headlee Amendment, until the taxpayers' sheltering oak was but a shrub. Although of lesser import, we think the following three items suggest that a federal-mandate exception can only be found by a dark or abstruse reading of § 29. First, in at least two other states where courts have considered whether special education is a state-mandated activity under constitutional limits that do not have an express federal limitation, the parties did not even think to argue for such an exception. One of these states, Missouri, has a tax-limitation provision modeled directly on our Headlee Amendment. See Rolla 31 School Dist. v. Missouri, 837 S.W.2d 1 (Mo., 1992), Fort Zumwalt School Dist. v. Missouri, 896 S.W.2d 918 (Mo., 1995), and Worcester v. Governor, 416 Mass. 751, 625 N.E.2d 1337 (1994). Second, defendants did not start arguing in favor of a federal-mandate exception until the hearings before Special Master Deneweth, eight years after the commencement of these proceedings. [22] A meaning most obvious to the common understanding would have certainly made its appearance before that. Before that time, defendants had stated to this Court that special education was a state-mandated activity under § 29. Also before that time, the Legislature had begun funding all the necessary costs of local and intermediate school district compliance with revisions in the administrative rules for special education, effective July 1, 1987. 1987 P.A. 220, § 51(3), M.C.L. § 388.1651(3); M.S.A. § 15.1919(951)(3). Third, the drafters' notes comment on whether there are exceptions to the Headlee requirements for federal mandates. Because the drafters' intent might have been different than the meaning given by the great mass of the people and the notes were published after passage of the amendment and were not available when the people voted, the notes are not authoritative. Durant, supra, 424 Mich. at 382, n. 12, 381 N.W.2d 662. They are one tool available to the courts. Schmidt, supra, 441 Mich. at 257, n. 24, 490 N.W.2d 584. In particular, the notes are one indication of a contemporaneous reading of the amendment. They state, with regard to § 29: It was the drafters' intent to include all necessary state mandated cost increases in this provision, including but not limited to: changes in general law which increase local governmental costs, e.g., increases in the state minimum wage law; changes in the civil and criminal statutes, e. g., mandatory sentencing; federally encouraged changes in state law, e.g., unemployment compensation coverage; collective bargaining or compulsory arbitration mandates, land use regulations, etc. [Emphasis added.] With regard to § 26, the notes indicate: Directly or indirectly federally mandated spending increases are not exempted from the provisions of this section. It is the concensus [sic] that any problems arising from such federal requirements would be cured later on by a federal tax limitation amendment. Both of these suggest the absence from § 29 of any exception for federal mandates.