The ongoing hypocrisy of Bill Schuette

It’s not that I’m surprised by this, so much as it is that I can’t actually reach out and slap him across the face for being a douche.

In a brief filed with the court, Schuette sides with Livonia, arguing that the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act is preempted by federal law and that local communities should not be forced to sanction criminal activity.

Got that? Federal law preempts Michigan law.

On July 1, the appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, struck down Michigan’s Proposal 2, which bans the consideration of race and gender in college admissions and government hiring. Judges R. Guy Cole Jr. and Martha Craig Daughtrey said it put an unconstitutional burden on minorities who would have to launch their own statewide petition drive to try to undo the law.

Schuette is appealing the ruling because it is “nutty” and because Michigan residents have the right to make laws ~~to protect white people~~ at the state level:

“We will stand up and protect the rights of all citizens of Michigan to be treated fairly,” Schuette said during a press conference at the attorney general’s Detroit offices at Cadillac Place on West Grand Boulevard.

Ok see that? Michigan law preempts federal law.

It’s ok if you are a Republican.

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memiller

On July 29:

Wayne County Judge Wendy Baxter upheld a zoning ordinance in Livonia that says no one can break federal law, including federal drug laws.

Now, by itself this ruling does not have effect across the state. But the ACLU has appealed the ruling to the Appeals Court — a risky move, from their point of view, because if Appeals upholds, then the ruling becomes binding across the state, and medical marihuana is done for, unless the State Supreme Court reverses.

Our township, along with many other municipalities across the state, has spent quite a bit on legal bills wrestling with this egregiously poorly-written law. The munis are all over the map on their approach to it; Kalamazoo Township took an approach of registering caregivers as home occupations, and limiting the density they could have. We explicitly did not write our ordinance to discourage the legal production of medical marihuana, but rather to keep it somewhat dispersed.

We have all been waiting for the state legislature to do their jobs and bring some clarity to this issue that we locals have been floundering around with. Now it appears that the courts may relieve them of the need to do anything. A Supreme Court decision based on the the same grounds as the present ruling — the Federal Supremacy clause — would be invulnerable to legislative reversal (even supposing the state legislature were minded to do so); it would take a constitutional amendment.

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Brad Forrester

Maybe the Honorable W. Baxter should have referenced Garden Grove v Superior Court, I know it was presented. This is firm law the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review. I hope the 9th Circuit relies on that decision as a basis for their determination when this pony trots into their pasture!
OaksterdamUniversity.com is hosting a seminar in Ann Arbor in September. The members of our judicial system need to take the course, I believe that decision is discussed in Chapter 1.

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Mike

Nothing could be more uninformed than this article's discussion of affirmative action.
Michigan's anti-affirmative action measure is entirely constitutional. The ninth circuit upheld a similar california measure (prop.209) in 1997. The California supreme court upheld it in 2010.
Regarding MCRI specifically, an different panel vacated a preliminary injunction for the same reasons as the ninth circuit in 2006. It is very odd that the current panel chose to ignore that holding.
The problem with the claim that the measure treats women and minorities unfairly can be summed up with this quote from Coalition For Economic Equity v. Wilson:

"While the Constitution protects against obstructions to equal treatment, it erects obstructions to preferential treatment by its own terms."

http://scholar.google.com/scho…

The measure applies to all. Any person of any race or sex can seek a preference based on being a veteran, being disabled, being poor, etc. No person of any race or sex can seek a preference based on his/her race or sex. It is that simple.

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- http://www.bloggingformichigan.com Christine
  
  Mike, your comment got caught in the spam harvest on the basis of some javascript error .. (???) .. sorry about that. Anyway, it's the hypocrisy we're dealing with here. I'm pretty sure if the teabag constituency were vocal supporters of free marajuana, he'd be a little more consistent on the two issues.
  
  Ironically, true libertarians are supporters of free marajuana. Just saying.
  
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