LANSING – With the majority of the Michigan Supreme Court justices being sympathetic to right-wing conservatives, it comes as no surprise that the anti-union Associated Builders and Contractors is bringing them their latest case against prevailing wage.

On July 15 the Associated Builders and Contractors of Michigan announced that it would appeal a May 28 state Court of Appeals ruling that upheld the City of Lansing’s prevailing wage law.

The case originated from a 2012 lawsuit brought by the ABC, which said the City of Lansing’s law requiring the payment of prevailing wages on city-sponsored construction projects and “the regulation of third party wage and benefit rates is a matter of state, not municipal concern, which has been established by binding Michigan precedent.”

The ABC first took their case to Ingham County Circuit Court, where Judge Clinton Canady III agreed that Lansing’s prevailing wage law was invalid. He cited a 1923 state Supreme Court decision involving the City of Detroit. That ruling, he said, showed that “a municipality lacks the authority to regulate the level of wages and benefits provided by private businesses to its employees.”

But the subsequent 2-1 ruling issued on May 28 by a state Court of Appeals panel overturned Judge Canady’s ruling. The appellate court said the 1923 Supreme Court ruling had no discussion “as to why the setting of wage rates was a matter of state concern.” In addition, since that 91-year-old decision, the appeals court judges said the state’s 1963 amended Constitution granted Michigan’s cities and villages the “power to adopt resolutions and ordinances relating to its municipal concerns.”

In announcing that the case would be brought to the Supreme Court, ABC Michigan President Chris Fisher told MIRS News Service: “We are astounded that the Court of Appeals overstepped its authority by reinstating this ordinance, in direct contradiction to Michigan Supreme Court precedent. It is crystal clear that municipalities only have the specific powers . . . that does not include regulating wages and benefits of third parties as in the case of a prevailing wage ordinance.”

Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council attorney John Canzano, who has filed an informational “amicus” brief in the case but did not litigate it, indicated that he wasn’t surprised at the appellate court’s ruling. He said the case is “more about home rule for the power of cities to make their own decisions than it is about prevailing wage or policy issues.”

Furthermore, Canzano said the 1923 decision was based on the state’s 1909 Constitution, which was drawn up in an era when a federal minimum wage wasn’t even recognized in the U.S.  Basing a ruling on that 1923 court precedent “is a relic of a bygone era; it has no validity today,” Canzano said.

Still, one of the appeals court judges agreed with the ABC, as did the circuit court judge.

Canzano said the Supreme Court has several options with the case, including overruling the appellate court rulings, remanding the case back to a lower court, or simply refusing to take up the case, which would allow the Court of Appeals ruling to stand. Under the current legal environment, as a result of the appeals court ruling, Michigan municipalities are allowed to initiate and engage in prevailing wage laws.