An immigrant workers’ compensation lawsuit against the governor went before the Michigan Supreme Court Wednesday.
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center claims the state is creating more work for it by wrongly denying workers’ comp claims for people without legal status. The nonprofit says that’s because private-practice firms will no longer take on those cases, and so they filter to MIRC.
“We receive call after call from injured undocumented workers who are tremendously suffering, struggling to make ends meet to feed themselves and their families because they can’t access this basic assistance for wage loss after they’ve been severely injured at work,” MIRC attorney Anna Hill Galendez said.
The group claims the burden caused it to hire another employee in 2019. MIRC sued over the matter in 2021.
Rather than the merits of the case, Wednesday’s Supreme Court arguments focused on whether that lawsuit was filed in time. State law provides a one-year period to sue the state in most cases.
Speaking before the court, Assistant Attorney General Gallant Fish said even though the denial policy continues, the lawsuit is too late since the harm happened in 2019.
“MIRC has not alleged ongoing series of wrongs committed against MIRC, giving rise to independent causes of action for MIRC,” Fish said.
MIRC rejected that argument, its lawyers claiming instead that the harm is ongoing since the workers’ comp denials continue to increase the group’s call volume.
Speaking in the lobby outside the court after oral arguments, attorney David Muraskin, representing the immigrant rights center, said the governor is avoiding the substance of the case.
“She has delayed for years ... by claiming immunity. And what she has done before this court is try to skirt that issue and say, ‘Well this is really an issue of procedure,’ and dodge the implications of all her arguments" in lower courts,” Muraskin said.
The trial court that first heard the case decided it could go forward. The state Court of Appeals decided it should have been dismissed.
The state Supreme Court will now decide what happens next. If MIRC prevails, the case would go back to the lower court for further proceedings.
“Our hope is that we immediately go from the Court of Appeals to the trial court, the Court of Claims, to get the merits decided and then can, hopefully, vindicate the rights of undocumented workers which then would have to proceed back up. But with those rights protected,” Muraskin said.
The merits of the case that still need to be worked out in court include whether the state is properly using the 2003 state Supreme Court decision Sanchez v. Eagle Alloy, Inc., to deny claims.
MIRC argues the state is not because of federal and state decisions that have come later. It likens the situation to the state attempting to enforce defunct anti-sodomy laws even though the U.S. Supreme Court has declared them unconstitutional.
The state, however, argues MIRC doesn’t have standing to sue.
“There might be wrongs in the general sense that MIRC has alleged. If Sanchez was wrongly decided, then that’d mean denial of benefits under Sanchez would be, in some sense, a wrong. But it’s not a wrong committed against MIRC, giving rise to independent cause of action for MIRC,” Fish told Supreme Court justices.
The Court of Appeals never addressed the standing question in its opinion. That would likely come up if MIRC wins at the Supreme Court on Wednesday’s arguments over timing.
