Lansing Lines is presented in cooperation with MIRS, a Lansing-based news and information service.
Local Pro-Marijuana Initiatives Kicked Off Ballot
An attempt to put a new local regulatory and licensing scheme for adult-use recreational marijuana shops will not be allowed to appear on the ballots in Farmington, South Lyon, Sylvan Lake and Wixom.
Why is State government—instead of local governments—charged with setting the rules for marijuana regulations? Because local governments oversee the sale of marijuana, but must follow the state’s guidelines.
The Michigan Court of Appeals’ published opinion held that voter-initiated charter amendments are not a permissible method of implementing local regulations authorized by the state’s Michigan Regulation and Taxation Marihuana Act (MRTMA).
The statute, MCL 333.27956, is a delegation of authority to the municipality—not individuals of the electorate, who can only “petition for an ordinance to completely prohibit or set the number of marijuana retail establishments,” the opinion from Judges Michelle M. Rick, Michael J. Kelly and Philip P. Mariani reads.
“… Aside from petitions to prohibit or set the number of establishments via ordinance, a voter-initiated petition cannot be used to abrogate the authority vested in the municipality to regulate marijuana establishments through legislative enactment of ordinances, and voter-initiated petitions cannot be used to enact regulations regarding marijuana establishments,” the opinion noted.
Survey committees in Farmington, South Lyon, Sylvan Lake and Wixom sought to include proposed charter amendments regarding adult-use marijuana retail facilities, including application process, selection criteria and licensing.
The petitions met the threshold for placement on the Nov. 5 ballot, but each city clerk refused to certify the petition, citing, in part, the proposed amendments that were preempted by the MRTMA.
The cities then filed suit against the survey committees seeking a judgment that the petition denials were lawfully rejected. The cities also wanted the issue kept off the November ballot.
The trial court’s Aug. 8 opinion sided with the four cities.
Can Trump & GOP Escape Abortion Issue?
More than two years since Roe V. Wade was overturned, Democrats continue to talk about abortion as an election issue. The reason: Polling continues to be on their side, particularly in Michigan, where voters put the right to an abortion into the state constitution in 2022.
Sixty percent of Michiganders find the idea of the government penalizing abortions as a serious crime to be “not at all acceptable,” based on a June 18-July 3 poll conducted by the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.
The aforementioned result, which came from 659 adult respondents from Michigan, might not be surprising, particularly because more than 56 percent of voters supported Proposal 3 in 2022.
However, despite the successful abortion reform, Democrats can be perceived as still hoping the abortion issue can drive Michiganders to the polls in their favor.
For example, recently, the Harris-Walz campaign hosted a roundtable discussion with six college-age women outside of Michigan State University’s campus. The conversation was led by Rep. Julie Brixie (D-Okemos) and Sen. Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing), who tried making the case that young Michiganders should be driven by the abortion issue in the same way they were in 2022, when the statewide ballot asked voters about the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative,” (See “Harris-Walz Campaign Wants College Kids To Make Pro-Abortion Votes For Harris,” 9/3/2024).
“That’s one of the things that we’re really worried about. . ., that people think it’s not on the line for us here, but it is,” Brixie said. “The first thing (former President Donald Trump) said was he’s going to let the states decide, and then ‘Project 2025’ came out, and we see that that is not the agenda, that is not the plan, and this is just like the Supreme Court nominees. They said they weren’t going to do that, and they did it.”
Brixie referenced how Roe v. Wade – the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that federally guaranteed abortion access – was overturned by five justices in summer 2022, with three of them being Trump nominees.
The abortion subject also plays a role as Democrats try linking “Project 2025” to Trump. The former president has said he has nothing to do with “Project 2025,” the more than 900-page document by the conservative think-tank, the Heritage Foundation, which makes policy suggestions for a conservative White House and Republicans, in general.
Among the proposals, the document calls for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reverse its approval of chemical abortion drugs, providing that at “a bare-minimum,” access to abortion-inducing pills should be limited to within 49 days gestation – or seven weeks from the first day of a woman’s last menstrual cycle.
Despite Trump’s comments that he knows nothing about “Project 2025,” the Harris-Walz campaign continues to spotlight it on the campaign trail, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ official campaign store selling “Look Up Project 2025” sticker sheets for $6.
As for the summer survey, which contained a plus/minus 4.3 percent confidence interval for Michigan respondents, it also found that:
– 55.9 percent of Michigan respondents are comfortable overall with women having abortions, including 68.9 percent of Democratic participants and 24 percent of Republican survey takers.
– 52.6 percent of respondents listed themselves in the range of believing it’s very acceptable for the government not to be involved in trying to reduce the number of abortions, including 39.7 percent of Republican Michiganders and 66.5 percent of Democratic survey takers.
– 38.6 percent listed themselves in the range of believing it’s very acceptable for the government to use birth control education and expanded access to birth control as a way to prevent abortions. At the same time, 27 percent were in the range of believing it was “not at all acceptable.”
Of the 60 percent who were in the range of believing it was “not at all acceptable” for the government to use serious criminal penalties as a way to reduce abortion numbers, 48.3 percent of Republican survey takers contributed to this result, as well as 71.2 percent of Democratic respondents.
Nationally, as the survey heard back from 1,214 adults from throughout the United States, 55.6 percent listed themselves in the range of believing it was “not at all acceptable” for the government to make abortion a “serious crime.”
“I think the canary in the coal mine is that Trump should be very worried because of the change at the top of the ticket. Young women are incredibly excited about Kamala,” Brixie told MIRS. “We have gone from being concerned about having a pretty old candidate on the ballot, and hearing complaints from a lot of people about the age of President Biden, to now having former President Trump be the oldest candidate on the ballot, and clearly not resonating and hearing what people have been saying loud and clear about his previous record on abortion.”
On this week’s episode of the MIRS Monday Podcast, public affairs manager Katie Jesaitis, a former field organizer for Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said her election year magnifying glass is always on women in their 30s and 40s.
“In 2016, we were surprised that that voting bloc went more for Trump than for the Democratic bloc, (and) that pivoted back for (President Joe Biden) in the last election, and I think Democrats are hopeful it’s going to be a push for Kamala in this upcoming election,” Jesaitis said. “This is really anyone’s to win, and anyone’s to lose.”
Harris-Walz Campaign Wants College Kids To Make Pro-Abortion Votes For Harris
(EAST LANSING) – Sen. Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) and Rep. Julie Brixie (D-Okemos) spoke with women studying at Michigan State University, attempting to make the case why the abortion issue, as well as fears of a federal abortion ban, should drive young Michiganders to the polls this fall.
“Right now, more than one of three American women of reproductive age live in a state with a Republican abortion ban,” Anthony said, describing women outside of Michigan “being turned away from hospitals, forced to bleed out in parking lots, going into sepsis, fleeing into states to get the health care that they need.
“When I tell you, it is a time not for celebration, but a time of action, this is what we’re fighting against, and at the center of all of this has been (Former President) Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans,” she said.
About five days ago, while campaigning in Michigan, Trump made headlines by promising free access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) through his pro-family agenda. He proposed paying for treatment with either government funding or new insurance policy mandates (See “Trump Promises Free IVF Treatment In Potterville,” 8/29/2024).
Already throughout this election cycle, Democrats have discussed IVF as part of their larger focus on “reproductive freedom,” underscoring how reproductive rights are both about wanting to have children and not wanting to continue a pregnancy.
Earlier this year, surrogates for President Joe Biden’s now-suspended reelection campaign, like his U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, connected questions around the ethics of IVF to the June 2022 overturning of Roe V. Wade, which Trump celebrates, as assisted reproductive technology (ART) involves the frequent discarding of embryos (See “‘Reproductive Care Is Not All About Abortions,'” 3/28/2024).
Ultimately, today, Anthony and Brixie zoomed in on how Vice-President Kamala Harris, the current Democratic presidential nominee, is their chosen candidate for both abortion and IVF. Additionally, they talked about “Project 2025,” the more than 900-page document by the conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation that Democrats are trying to link to Trump.
The document calls for the next conservative president to work “with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support.”
This afternoon’s event, organized by the Harris-Walz campaign, took place adjacent to MSU’s campus at the Marriott East Lansing at University Place hotel. The gathering room was decorated by lime green “i’m so kamala” posters, which have been paying tribute this summer to British singer Charli XCX’s album cover “brat,” (See “It’s ‘Kamalanomenon,’ The Coconut Tree, Brat That’s Delivering The Message,” 7/26/2024).
Another intention of the day was to get young voters as motivated around abortion as they were in 2022, when more than 56.6 percent of Michigan voters approved the “Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative,” enshrining abortion access as a right within the state constitution.
“I am not a mama. I’m an auntie, and my nieces are about your age, and I feel, even with them, that they’re thinking ‘maybe this is one we can sit out, and that reproductive healthcare isn’t on the ballot in Michigan explicitly,'” Anthony said to the six college-age women in the room. “And I keep trying to tell them that the presidential election is just that.”
For that general election, a report affiliated with Tufts University in Massachusetts found that Michigan experienced the highest youth turnout in the United States.
Nationally, the average turnout for residents 18-to 29-years-olds – based on voter eligibility, not registration – was 23 percent. Meanwhile, in Michigan, 36.5 percent of those young residents showed up, with Michigan being one of the earliest states to have an abortion question on the ballot since Roe V. Wade was overturned.
However, a report published by the Department of State this summer illustrated a different situation: between the 2020 and the 2022 elections, the percentage of young registered voters – 18 to 29 year-olds – who did not vote has grown from 38.3 percent to 59.2 percent in Michigan.
“I’m seeing so much enthusiasm from our age group, something that I didn’t think I was going to see this election, but now that Kamala is running, I’ve seen so much of it,” said Renna Robinson, an MSU freshman who graduated from Birmingham Public Schools in June.
Robinson explained she’d been in a lecture hall recently full of raised hands when students were asked if they were planning on voting, for the first time this year. She believes a pro-abortion vote from a Michigander this fall is for “our friends in the red states who currently are in danger.”
However, Brixie said one of the things she’s really worried about “is that people think it’s not on the line for us here. But it is.”
Another participant was Lauren Marshall, who studied political science and government at Kalamazoo College, and graduated in June. Prior to that, she earned her high school diploma from Lansing Catholic High School. She said there’s a lot of people outside political spaces who don’t think a Trump-implemented federal abortion ban is possible.
“You have like a lot of false safety right now,” Marshall said, additionally citing how, although there’s excitement around Harris, young people like her little sister don’t fully grasp the rules of voting, especially after major post-2022 election reform.
She said her sister didn’t know that one did not need to register to vote again after their first time.
Another participant was East Lansing native Julia Walters, a law student at MSU. She would like to see the government working to enhance abortion access to “vulnerable populations.” This could possibly look like allowing public welfare to be used to reach abortion services, or authorizing public dollars to be appropriated to facilities that dispense abortion services.
“If you’re actually using an equity lens and trying to reach every person who needs care, there’s so much more,” Anthony said. “What I know that Representative Brixie and I are excited about having an administration at the federal level who will back us up, who will not be doing everything within their power to undermine what the voters in Michigan continue to affirm…that (we) should have no bans, (and) that access should be inclusive and just for everyone.”
In terms of IVF, legislative Democrats in Michigan also plan to target Republicans in Lansing who opposed legislation recognizing surrogacy contracts for families unable to carry their own children. The legislation, which was signed into law in the spring, ensures individuals who use IVF are automatically viewed by state law as a child’s parents (See “House Delivers Streamlined Surrogacy Law,” 11/8/2023).
The bills passed in the House by a party-line vote, with no Republican support.
“Our Minority House Leader Matt HALL (R-Richland Township) said he supports IVF, and yet he voted against the bills that we just had,” Brixie said.
Anthony added, “Stop listening to what these people say.”
COVID-Shuttered Businesses Won’t Recoup Losses
Gyms, bowling alleys and other venues will not get reimbursement for losses during the COVID-19 pandemic now that the Michigan Supreme Court has denied their appeal.
The court, which heard oral arguments in January, said today that it was “not persuaded that the question presented should be reviewed by this court.” (See “Gyms, Bowling Alleys Wants Shutdown Reimbursements,” 1/10/24).
Justice David VIVIANO dissented, holding issues remain whether The Gym 24/7, Mt. Clemens Recreational Bowl and Mirage Catering claims are a categorical taking and he would not have dismissed the suit before discovery was completed.
“It is this Court’s ‘duty to ensure that the branches of government … operate within the constitutionally established boundaries, particularly during times of crisis,’” wrote Viviano, who was joined by Justice Richard Bernstein.
Viviano noted in his The Gym 24/7 dissent that denying leave to appeal fails to provide guidance to lower courts on how to analyze claims under a prior decision, Penn Central Transportation Co. v. City of New York, and also damages “the credibility of the judiciary to serve as a bulwark of our liberty and ensure that the government does not take private property without just compensation — even in times of crisis.”
In his Recreational Bowl dissent, Viviano noted that the Michigan Court of Appeals “failed to understand the meaningful distinctions” between the two cases, and the appeals court’s holding that its Gym opinion is binding law on how to view the pandemic regulations is not accurate.
“It is absurd to think that Gym 24/7 Fitness’ analysis of a select few orders – specifically as they affected gyms and fitness centers – could apply broadly to every COVID-19 regulation,” he wrote.
In 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive orders shuttered The Gym 24/7 Fitness LLC, Mt. Clemens Recreational Bowl and Mirage Catering, which ultimately went under (See “GOP Justices Rule Against Gov On Emergency Powers Used During COVID,” 10/2/20).
The plaintiffs’ attorney argued before the court in January that the executive orders (EO) essentially created a “taking” and they should be allowed to proceed in the Court of Claims with discovery to determine whether, and how much, the state could owe for the businesses’ monetary loss during the shutdowns.
However, the Attorney General’s office argued the EOs addressed a public health emergency and were equal to all.
“During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state acted decisively to save countless lives by implementing critical public health measures,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said. “As we move forward, today’s decisions will help us in our collective efforts to maintain a strong and healthy Michigan.”
The trial court sided with the plaintiffs, but the Michigan Court of Appeals did not (See “Gym Loses Again In Suing State Over Pandemic-Era EO,” 4/4/22).