Despite pushback from the state’s attorney general, Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder said Tuesday that he will appeal a recent ruling from a court of appeals that demands that the state return more than $550 million that was taken out of teachers’ pay checks in recent years to pay for retiree health care, according to the Associated Press.
In 2010, the state began deducting 3 percent of teachers’ pay checks to cover increasing health-care costs for its retired teachers. The state has argued that the deductions were required to keep the government’s financial books in order.
The deductions lasted for only two years before Snyder signed a new one into law that was subsequently approved by the state’s supreme court .
Two Michigan Court of Appeals have struck down the 2010 deducations as unconstitutional, siding with teachers’ lawyers who argued that the teachers whose pay was being docked aren’t set to receive the same retiree benefits, according to the Detroit Free Press. The most recent ruling came last month and orders the government to return the $550 million to the state’s 200,000 eligible teachers.
Republican Bill Schuette, the state’s attorney general who is rumored to be planning a run for governor has refused to represent the governor in the case, and instead will provide a special assistant attorney general.