Respect Maine

Respect Maine Sues Senate President Jackson, Speaker Talbot Ross, and Governor Janet T. Mills

Respect Maine has retained Steve Smith Trial Lawyers to represent Maine residents and taxpayers in a citizen-led lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Legislature’s presiding officers parliamentary maneuvers and Governor Janet Mills proclamation ordering the Maine legislature into an unconstitutional special session. Several elected legislators – including co-plaintiffs Representatives Shelley Rudnicki and Randall Greenwood – have also joined with Respect Maine in defending Maine’s Constitution.

This lawsuit was first filed after Governor Mills and the majority in the state legislature colluded to pass a “this is our baseline” budget at the end of March by a simple majority vote instead of working to build a bipartisan budget. Because they chose not to obtain a two-thirds majority vote, the Democrats’ budget could not become law until 90 days after the Legislature ended the regular legislative session. If they didn’t adjourn the regular session by the first day in April, their budget gambit would shut down the state government when the current fiscal year ended on June 30.

Presiding officers Senate President Jackson and Speaker of the House Talbot-Ross weren’t willing to give up the rest of their party’s agenda just to get their budget on time, so before adjourning, they asked for both parties’ consent to reconvene quickly so they wouldn’t have to reschedule any meetings. Only one party’s legislators supported that effort, but it was too late to change course, so the presiding officers were forced to rely on Governor Mills to reconvene the Legislature after they adjourned.

Stepping up to fulfill her role in the plan, Governor Mills proclaimed that a legislature adjourning with business left pending – which happens every time a regular session ends – now constitutes an “extraordinary occasion.” Based on this occasion, she ordered the Legislature to immediately reconvene and resume meeting to conduct its business – not coincidentally, on the same day the presiding officers had suggested to the legislators. During the regular session, not only had the presiding officers been assured of the Governor’s intervention, the words “and whatever other business may come before the legislature” were added at their explicit request. This proclamation allowed the partisan budget to take effect, the majority to resume pushing their legislative agenda, and opened the door for the majority to continue passing legislation unabated well past the statutory end date for the regular session.

Governor Mills’ actions conflict starkly with her own published legal opinion. As Maine’s Attorney General in 2015, Janet Mills wrote that it is solely up to the Legislature to determine when its own legislative session is over, and further added: “for another branch of government to reinterpret the decision of the Legislature [as to when its session ended] might well violate . . . the Maine Constitution.”