Michigan Supreme Court blocks efforts to give undocumented immigrants workers’ comp

LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday blocked efforts by an immigrant rights group seeking workers compensation benefits for undocumented immigrant workers in Michigan.

The high court, which held a hearing on the case in October, ruled 4-3 that Michigan Immigrant Rights Center should not be allowed to appeal the case, which had been dismissed by a lower court because of a procedural error.

In a short order, the majority said it was “not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by this court.”

Justices Elizabeth Welch, Kimberly Thomas and Megan Cavanagh, all Democratic nominees to the bench, authored dissents in the case.

The case dates back to 2017, when the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center opened a farmworker and immigrant rights program that was soon “overwhelmed” by calls from undocumented immigrants who were injured on the job and had been denied workers compensation from the state because they were undocumented, according to Friday’s order.

The quantity of those calls required the center to hire additional staff in 2019 and “strained its resources.”

A prior Court of Appeals opinion dating back to 2003 had established that workers could not receive compensation benefits if a crime prevents them from obtaining or performing work. The use of false documentation to obtain employment constituted a crime and thus disqualified undocumented immigrants from compensation benefits, the 2003 opinion concluded.

The immigrant rights center challenged that precedent in a 2021 lawsuit against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in an effort to get a ruling that found the policy unconstitutional as it pertains to future consideration of workers comp for undocumented workers.

The Whitmer administration fought the lawsuit on several fronts, including the citation of a key procedural issue that requires lawsuits against the state to be preceded by a notice of intent to sue that must be filed within a year of the underlying action prompting the suit.

The state argued the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center’s 2019 hiring of additional workers was when the one-year clock to file began to tick, and that the 2021 filing against the state came too late.

The Court of Claims dismissed the state’s position, arguing the one-year clock only pertained to relief sought for past actions, not ones where plaintiffs were seeking to block future action, as the immigrant rights center was. The Court of Appeals reversed the Court of Claims and found the one-year notice requirement did apply, even when seeking prospective relief.

Welch said in her dissent that the center should have been able to proceed with its case because, in her view, the notice provision only applies to claims that are based on past harms.

“It does not apply to the future harms plaintiff sought to prevent,” Welch wrote.

Thomas, in a dissent joined by Cavanagh, argued the notification provision applied only to suits against the state itself, not to state officers such as Whitmer. Because the immigrant rights group was suing Whitmer as a state officer, it shouldn’t have been subject to the one-year notice rule, she wrote.

Further, Thomas continued, the governor would not be immune from the center’s suit because it asserts the governor is maintaining an unconstitutional policy and is seeking to stop her from doing so in the future — all factors that surmount claims to sovereign immunity.

For those reasons, Thomas wrote, the Court of Appeals erred in its ruling.

“This ruling ignores the language of the statute and more than 100 years of sovereign immunity law,” Thomas wrote. “It also risks placing formalism above the rights and freedoms enshrined in our federal and state constitutions.”

And, she noted, neither the Court of Appeals ruling nor the Supreme Courts denial of appeal “constitutes the final word on this issue.”

“It is my hope that the court will revisit these issues in the appropriate future case,” Thomas said.