Opinion ID: 2792311
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: aft mich ii

Text: Public school employees, through their representative labor organizations, asserted numerous constitutional challenges to the validity of 2012 PA 300 in the Court of Claims. However, unlike its ruling in the challenge to 2010 PA 75, the Court of Claims ruled in favor of the state on all claims, holding that the provisions of the earlier statute deemed in AFT Mich I to have been unconstitutional had been sufficiently ameliorated by the enactment of the more recent statute, in particular by the choice afforded employees regarding whether to pay into the retiree healthcare plan, and that several new challenges raised for the first time against the later act were equally unavailing. Regarding the only new challenge germane to the instant case, the court found that public school employees had no vested interest in future pension benefits and, as a result, that 2012 PA 300 did not affect any contractual obligation on the part of the state to allow employees to accrue pension benefits at any particular rate. Plaintiffs appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the Court of Claims. AFT Mich v Michigan, 303 Mich App 651; 846 NW2d 583 (2014) (AFT Mich II). As did the Court of Claims, the Court of Appeals held that contributions to the retiree healthcare program would be made voluntarily and were therefore free of constitutional infirmity. The Court also assessed plaintiffs’ challenges to the pension modification and, again as did the Court of Claims, concluded that 2012 PA 300 did not affect any obligation of contracts between the state and public school employees in this regard because the state is 8 not obligated to provide future pension benefits to public school employees. Plaintiffs sought leave to appeal in this Court, which we granted. AFT Mich v Michigan, 495 Mich 1002 (2014).