LANSING, Mich. -- The Michigan Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court's order granting dismissal of a case that served as one of the last outstanding challenges to Michigan's 2020 election results.
The suit filed in October 2020 contended that private grant money awarded to local governments running elections violated Equal Protection rights, and that the Secretary of State should have prevented local election officials from accepting the grants or required them to return the funds. The grants had been awarded by the Center for Technology & Civic Life.
But the Michigan Attorney General's Office says documents revealed the plaintiffs each resided in jurisdictions that benefitted by private grant funding in the 2020 election cycle. According to a statement from the Attorney General's Office:
The subsequent passage of Proposal 2-22 expressly granted local election officials discretion on whether to accept and use private funds to conduct and administer elections.
In their opinion, the Court of Appeals wrote that “even if plaintiffs’ claims were not moot before and even if plaintiffs had standing to raise those claims, plaintiffs’ claims are most surely moot now and the issue of standing is no longer relevant.” This is the first time any Michigan court has had occasion to look at the new Const 1963, art 2, sec 4(3) which resulted from Proposal 2-22's passage.
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