LANSING – Governor Rick Snyder filed a request Monday with the Supreme Court for a direct ruling on the constitutionality of the right-to-work law enacted last year.

If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, it would bypass the trial courts and Court of Appeals should the unions or others have filed litigation against the law’s constitutionality. So far, they have not.

In the request, Snyder requests that the court rule before the end of its term in July on whether the law affects state classified employees. Some members of the Civil Service Commission have said that only the Civil Service Commission under the Constitution could implement right-to-work rules on state classified employees. Snyder disagrees.

Snyder also requests rulings on:

Whether the law violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution if the law does not apply to state classified employees and, similarly, if the law violates that clause because it exempts police officers and fire fighters; and

Whether PA 349 of 2012 (HB 4003 , affecting public employers) represents a change of purpose that violates the Michigan Constitution.

Civil Service Commissioner James Barrett, a Snyder appointee, and Public Employer Jan Winters asked Snyder to request the advisory opinion.

“This is a very time-sensitive question,” Snyder wrote in his letter to Chief Justice Robert Young Jr. “The state’s current collective bargaining agreements expire on December 31, 2013. Following regular practice, negotiations regarding new contracts will likely begin in the summer. It is essential that all parties to the negotiations know definitively whether the new contracts must comply with Public Act 349 before these negotiations commence roughly five months from now.”

Snyder also mentioned threats from the law’s opponents to file litigation against it and called trial court consideration unnecessary.

“Because the issues at stake are purely legal in character, the court would not benefit from factual development at the trial court level,” he wrote.

Snyder previously made one such request for an advisory opinion, on the tax overhaul that replaced the Michigan Business Tax with the Corporate Income Tax and eliminated several individual income tax credits and exemptions. The court granted that request.

Democrats and unions denounced the move, all citing the Supreme Court having a majority of justices nominated by the Republican Party.

“Yet again, it’s the governor not showing the patience for the democratic and judicial process,” said Doug Pratt, spokesperson for the Michigan Education Association. “You take a bill and ram it through in less than a week and then you turn from the Legislature to the judicial branch and say, eh, let’s skip a couple steps and go right to the end.”

House Democratic spokesperson Katie Carey said Snyder clearly expects to lose in the lower courts.

“Instead he is court shopping and going straight to the Republican-dominated Supreme Court as a way to justify his awful legislation that would hurt hundreds of thousands of middle class families,” she said.

And Senate Democratic spokesperson Bob McCann said Snyder clearly wants the case to be heard by the court when it has a 5-2 Republican majority once Snyder appoints a justice to replace former Justice Diane Hathaway, who resigned amid a real estate scandal.

“I hardly think it’s a coincidence that he’s asking the court to immediately take up an issue that he’s about to hand-pick a new member of,” he said.

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