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Justices decline challenge to Michigan term limits, take Sturgis Schools case

The Detroit News - 10/3/2022

Oct. 4—Washington — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a challenge to Michigan's term limits for state lawmakers but agreed to hear another Michigan case involving the federal law for disabled students and Sturgis Public Schools.

The justices also declined a petition for the court to review a case out of Detroit in which the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the city couldn't be held liable for its police officers' alleged failure in 2014 to accommodate the disabilities of a protester during an arrest.

That case involved the Detroit police arrest of water activist "Baba" Baxter Jones, who had sued the city and the officers who transported him in a cargo van without proper safety restraints for someone in a wheelchair, claiming he was injured during the ride.

The justices on Monday let stand a 6th Circuit decision last year affirming a lower court ruling that dismissed Jones' claim that the city was liable for the officers' failure to accommodate him, finding vicarious liability is not available for claims made under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The justices also decided not to touch the 6th Circuit ruling in November upholding Michigan's term limits and denying a legal challenge brought by a bipartisan group of former state lawmakers in 2019.

A panel of the Appeals Court had concluded that the court shouldn't intervene in Michigan voters' decision to impose term limits in 1992, saying the matter goes to "the heart of state sovereignty." If voters wish to change the law, the panel said they need to do so at the ballot box.

Indeed, a related question will be put to Michigan voters next month. Proposal 1 on the November ballot would alter Michigan's 1992 voter-approved term limits and allow lawmakers to serve 12 years overall in Lansing, with the potential for all of their years to be spent in the House, all in the Senate or split between the two chambers.

Currently, legislators are limited to serving three, two-year terms in the House and two, four-year terms in the Senate for a maximum of 14 years in the Legislature.

Attorneys for the 10 former state lawmakers had argued that Michigan's legislative term limits were the "shortest and harshest" in the country and violated candidates' and voters' First and 14th Amendment rights. They also argued that the review of candidates' qualifications should be put to heightened level of scrutiny, rather than the rational basis review used by the 6th Circuit.

"This case is an excellent vehicle to decide what level of scrutiny should apply to candidate qualifications that impinge on First Amendment rights," attorneys Charlie Spies, John Bursch and Christopher Trebilcock wrote for the petitioners.

They argued that the term limits haven't worked as intended and have had "deleterious" effects, including hurting policy innovation and "sucking" legislative experience out of the chambers, making it harder to build consensus around complex policy solutions and causing an over-reliance on lobbyists and career staff who have more institutional memory.

The group of former lawmakers had sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson seeking an injunction prohibiting her from enforcing the state's term limits. Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud, representing Benson, filed a brief in opposition to the former lawmakers' petition that, among other points, highlighted the ballot question pending on the issue in November's election.

"... There is no certainty that the term limits on which petitioners based their original claim will still be in place by the time this court has a chance to fully consider the case," Hammoud said.

Justices take Sturgis Schools case

The case out of Sturgis in southwest Michigan involves a deaf student, Miguel Perez, who attended Sturgis Public Schools and did not receive a qualified sign language interpreter for 12 years, which he said left him unable to learn or communicate at school. Months before his high school graduation, the school told his parents they would only provide a "certificate of completion" rather than a diploma.

In 2017, Perez filed claims in a state administrative proceeding under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, and related state statutes, but the hearing officer dismissed the ADA claim on the grounds that he lacked the authority to hear it.

The school district later settled Perez's IDEA claim, including an agreement to pay for his attendance at the Michigan School for the Deaf, sign-language instruction for him and his family, and his family's attorneys' fees, according to court records.

Perez next filed a lawsuit against Sturgis Schools in federal court in 2018 for his ADA claim, which unlike IDEA allows for compensatory damages for emotional distress. But the the District Court dismissed Perez's claim, saying he'd not fully pursued it through the state administrative proceedings process. Perez argued that exhaustion would have been futile because he'd gotten all the relief available in the IDEA proceedings through the settlement.

A divided panel of the 6th Circuit affirmed the ruling, concluding that Perez's decision to settle his IDEA claim meant that he was barred from bringing a similar lawsuit against the school district, "even under a different federal law," because of an "exhaustion" requirement under IDEA that required him to complete the IDEA administrative process.

The majority concluded that Perez didn't "exhaust" the process because the hearing officer didn't rule on whether he got an appropriate education under IDEA, because of the parties' settlement.

Perez's attorneys asked the Supreme Court to review the case, arguing the 6th Circuit's holding on the futility exception is an "outlier" and created a split with other circuit courts of appeals that have recognized such an exception.

Attorneys for Sturgis Schools urged the court to deny Perez's petition. They argued that it turned on his request for emotional distress damages and, because of the high court's intervening ruling in Cummings v. Premier Rehab Keller, Perez cannot recover emotional distress damages under the ADA.

Sturgis Schools also contended that the courts of appeals are "uniformly" in agreement that plaintiffs seeking damages must exhaust the administrative process.

"Petitioner claims the court 'disregarded' this court's precedent and flouted congressional intent," they said. "But this court has never recognized a futility exception under §1415(l), and the Sixth Circuit correctly declined to write one into the statute."

Over the summer, the justices invited the U.S. solicitor general's office to weigh in, and it urged the high court to take up the case.

"We're pleased that the court has agreed to hear this important case to resolve crucial questions of federal disability law," Perez attorney Roman Martinez said in a statement.

"My client Miguel Perez was discriminated against for 12 years, throughout his entire tenure as a student. We look forward to explaining to the Court why he is entitled to a fair adjudication of his claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act, just as Congress intended."

mburke@detroitnews.com

Staff writer Beth LeBlanc contributed.

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