AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled against a group of Republican lawmakers and an Augusta man who filed a lawsuit against Gov. Janet Mills, Senate President Troy Jackson, and Speaker of the Maine House Rachel Talbot Ross.
The plaintiffs, led by William Clardy, claim the Democrats broke with the Maine Constitution in bringing the Maine Legislature into a special session last year.
The governor called the session shortly after the Legislature passed a new budget and adjourned, allowing the budget to take effect 90 days later and averting a government shutdown.
Clardy and his fellow plaintiffs, including Republican State Reps. Shelley Rudnicki and Randall Greenwood, as well as the organization Respect Maine, argue the process of calling the session involved coordination between legislative and executive branches that violated the separation of powers.
“They didn’t keep their powers separate. The two branches colluded,” Clardy said Wednesday. “If the session was illegal, then the laws that were passed were illegal.”
The Maine Supreme Court sided with an earlier ruling from a judge in Kennebec County Superior Court in dismissing the suit. But, instead of weighing in on whether Clardy’s claims were constitutionally valid, the justices only said he lacked standing to bring the suit because he and his fellow plaintiffs couldn’t show that the actions they accused the governor and legislators of carrying out caused “injury that is actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical.”
The concept of standing is a key threshold all types of legal action must cross.
“If you don’t have standing as the plaintiffs, then you don’t have an action you can bring,” Tim Zerillo, a Portland defense attorney, explained.
“I think this is a fairly narrowly drawn decision,” he added.
But while Clardy accuses the court of “not wanting to touch the real issue” in its ruling, lawmakers defending the special session and the Democrats' conduct see the decision not to address Clardy’s claims as victory in its own right.
“I think the court would have commented if they felt it was unconstitutional. The court has not been afraid to comment on other cases,” State Sen. Joe Baldacci, a Democrat and lawyer from Bangor, said Wednesday.
Clardy said he is strongly considering filing an appeal to the Maine Supreme Court’s decision. The attorney general's office, which represented Mills and the Democratic leaders in the suit, declined to comment on the decision.