Whitmer Assails Supreme Court; Questions The Legitimacy Of Its Ruling On Executive Orders
She demeans serious and fundamental constitutional disagreements as mere partisanship
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer again attacked the Michigan Supreme Court more than a week after justices struck down as unlawful and unconstitutional her ongoing governance by executive order.
Whitmer criticized the state’s highest court on the ABC program “The View.”
“The Supreme Court did a lot of mental gymnastics and had a party-line vote and invalidated the 1945 law that was the source of a lot of the actions that we took,” Whitmer said.
Michigan’s governor has maintained a defiant posture after being rebuked by the state Supreme Court several times.
The executive branch of Michigan’s state government has been rebuffed in all three cases involving Whitmer’s executive orders that have reached the state’s Supreme Court.
After the court ruled on Oct. 2 that the ongoing executive orders were unlawful and unconstitutional, the governor asserted she had a 21-day window during which they were still enforceable.
The Michigan Supreme Court shot down that claim on Oct. 12, affirming that its order was effective Oct. 2.
The response by Whitmer and her health department director has been to vilify the Supreme Court’s decision by, among other things, implying the rulings were motivated by political partisanship.
On Oct. 4, Whitmer denounced the Supreme Court’s Oct. 2 decision on CNN, referring to it as a “slim, majority, Republican vote” which, she said, undermined her attempt to “save thousands of lives.”
She then urged voters to support more liberal Supreme Court justices “because we have to have justices who do the right thing and follow the rule of law.”
Robert Gordon, director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, has also weighed in, citing his expertise as a law clerk for former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to attack the court’s rulings.
In one instance, Gordon said in a press release the logic and integrity of Supreme Court majority was something used by the “anti-government right-[wing].”
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.