Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has been waging an ideological (and legal) war against the LGBT community for years. Schuette has a long history of wasting taxpayer money. His most recent utter failure came when the Supreme Court of the United States made same-sex marriage legal in America. In addition to the money spent by state attorneys working on the case, Schuette spent $50,000 to hire a private attorney for the SCOTUS trial despite having over 100 full-time attorneys on his staff.
And now the State of Michigan is paying the court costs and attorney fees for the Michigan defendants in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges SCOTUS case.
The bill: $1.9 million.
The state of Michigan has paid the nearly $2 million legal tab for the Michigan couple whose lawsuit helped clear the way for same-sex couples to legally marry.The state was on the hook for the legal bill for the Hazel Park couple, April and Jayne DeBoer-Rowse, who challenged the state’s 2004 ban on gay marriage in a landmark federal lawsuit brought in 2012. The state paid just over $1.9 million in fees as requested by their legal team. […]
The couple were represented by local attorneys Dana Nessel and Carole Stanyar.
Stanyar said the case brought great personal sacrifice.
“Four years without a paycheck, fronting costs in a case of this magnitude, was certainly hard on our families,” Stanyar said Wednesday, on the day she received the final payment. “The fee statute was enacted to empower and encourage the vindication of civil rights. I do feel empowered, and very encouraged. So I guess the law is working as Congress intended.”
Stanyar added: “If our case motivates younger lawyers to stand up for people, do the right the thing, that would be great.”
I have become friends with some of the folks on the legal team including Carole Stanyar and Dana Nessel and I couldn’t be happier to see them properly compensated for their important, difficult, and historic work. They earned it and then some.
Meanwhile, Bill Schuette will continue to spend our tax dollars to pursue his hard-right ideological agenda right up until he runs for governor, another hypocritical Republican pretending to give a damn about government overreach and waste.
Heaven help us all if this man actually becomes governor.
