Hardy har har har
Judge Daphne Means Curtis of the Wayne County Circuit Court today dismissed a frivolous lawsuit filed by the corporatist front group Mackinac Center today. The lawsuit attempted to make new Right to Work rules retroactive to before the time when the contract was signed. The contract was negotiated and signed BEFORE the odious anti-union law went into effect.
Judge Means Curtis said that the “individual plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the contract, that the court did not have jurisdiction regarding claims made under the public employment relations act.” In other words, the Mackinac Center was poking its corporatist nose where it didn’t belong and, if the teachers they used as plaintiffs in their case need to take it up with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, not the court.
The Taylor teachers union and their district legally negotiated a mutually agreed-to contract whether the Mackinac Center or these three teachers like it or not. The contract was ratified in February but the right to work law didn’t go into effect until March.
Linda Moore, president of the American Federation of Teachers Local 1085 issued this statement:
Allowing a challenge to a law that hadn’t yet taken effect would have been like testing kids on materials that haven’t been introduced in a classroom. The contract was negotiated and ratified between Taylor Public Schools and Taylor Federation of Teachers. It should be up to local community public schools to determine best practices for a school district. This is a shameful example of special interests trying to wedge themselves between the rights of hard-working educators in our state. Politics don’t belong in the classroom. We need to work together in order to give Michigan students the world-class education they deserve.
One can only hope that the Mackinac Center spent a huge pile of their corporate loot on the lawsuit. Perhaps it will make them think twice before filing frivolous, time and money-wasting lawsuits like this in the future.
But I doubt it. In fact, they have vowed that “this is only the beginning”.
