Dana's Dispatch: Ensuring School Safety, Fighting Price Gouging, Defending Voting Rights & More!

--------------------------------------------------------------- AG Nessel visits Muskegon to talk school safety My department visited Muskegon Public Schools as part of our initiative to ensure safety in public schools across the state. Underserved communities require funding for security improvement measures, & MI needs common sense gun safety laws to keep firearms out of our schools. Attorney General Dana Nessel visited Muskegon Public Schools Friday afternoon to discuss school safety in the wake of the Oxford High School shooting. Administrators shared new ways they are working to address safety in a roundtable discussion. “I have been going all over this state and I asked the same questions that I was asking to Muskegon today which is, what safety protocols (do) you have in place from an equipment standpoint? What is it that you need?” Nessel said. Nessel toured part of a school building to see new locks and other tools to make it more secure. Nessel says she and the majority of Michiganders supports safe gun storage law. Red flag laws and raising the legal age to purchase a firearm to 21 were also discussed. The attorney general is calling for funding to be provided to districts in greater financial need. “How safe your child is in school should not be predicated on how wealthy your school district is and we have to do something to level the playing field so that each and every parent can send their child to school knowing that their school is gonna be the safest they possibly can be,” Nessel said. [READ MORE]( Kyle Mitchell, Wood TV (September 9, 2022) AG Nessel visits Muskegon to talk school safety Retrieved from: [AG Nessel visits Muskegon to talk school safety]( --------------------------------------------------------------- High court orders abortion, voting rights proposals on Nov. 8 ballot in Michigan It's official, Michigan! Just in case you needed more motivation to vote this fall, the MI Supreme Court ruled that the future of reproductive freedom and voting rights will be on the ballot. You can register to vote absentee TODAY at this link: [( The Michigan Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a proposal onto the Nov. 8 ballot that seeks to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, a highly charged issue that political experts said would affect the election. The high court on Thursday overruled a deadlocked Board of State Canvassers and ordered the four-member panel to certify the ballot proposal as Prop 3 for the Nov. 8 ballot, discarding arguments that spacing issues in the petition initiative were enough to disqualify the measure. The high court also ruled the Board of State Canvassers should do the same for a voting rights proposal seeking, among other things, to allow for nine days of early voting in Michigan. The Reproductive Freedom for All ballot committee celebrated Thursday's decision. "This affirms that more than 730,000 voters read, signed, and understood the petitions and that the frivolous claims from the opposition are simply designed to distract from our effort to keep the abortion rights we had under Roe for nearly 50 years," group spokeswoman Darci McConnell said. The initiative, if passed by voters in November, would affirm abortion rights in the constitution and nullify the state's 1931 abortion law, which bans abortion in all cases except when it is performed to save the life of the mother. Enforcement of the law remains blocked as courts battle over whether there is already a right to abortion in the state constitution. [READ MORE]( Beth LeBlanc, Detroit News (September 8, 2022) High court orders abortion, voting rights proposals on Nov. 8 ballot in Michigan Retrieved from: [High court orders abortion, voting rights proposals on Nov. 8 ballot in Michigan]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Nessel files bypass application for Michigan Supreme Court to hear insulin case Let's call the exorbitant cost of insulin what it is: price-gouging. Unfortunately so-called "regulated" industries are currently shielded from consumer protection claims. The MI Supreme Court must step in & allow full enforcement of the MI Consumer Protection Act. Lives are on the line, & I'm not done fighting! Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a motion this week asking the Michigan Supreme Court to take up her challenge of past decisions by the court that her office says have limited enforcement of the Michigan Consumer Protection Act. The Democrat filed the bypass application on Tuesday because she says the Michigan Supreme Court’s former rulings exempt insulin pricing practices from scrutiny, as well as preventing her from examining pricing misconduct with regard to other prescription medications. The cases being challenged are Smith v. Globe Life, decided in 1999, and Liss v. Lewiston, decided in 2007. The decisions created an exemption to the MCPA, ruling that if alleged misconduct is taking place within a regulated industry then it is not punishable under the law. “The Smith and Liss decisions have unjustifiably transformed a narrowly stated exception within the MCPA into a broad shield potentially available whenever a State or Federal regulatory scheme relating to the underlying transaction can be identified — regardless of whether that regulatory scheme does anything to protect consumers from deceptions, gouging, unfairness, or other improprieties. This Court’s review is necessary,” Nessel wrote in the bypass application. The American Diabetes Association estimates that 912,794 people in Michigan have diabetes and that people with diabetes have medical expenses about 2.3 times higher than those without it. Nessel’s office has encouraged consumers, pharmacists and health professionals to share their experiences with the high cost of insulin using the consumer complaint form on its website. Nessel previously said that if she is successful in the case, “it won’t just be about insulin prices. And it actually won’t just be about medication. It will allow us to better protect consumers on a broad range of issues.” “You can’t win a case you never file,” Nessel said. “And it’s worth challenging these decisions, because quite honestly, we can’t do worse, right? If we lose them, we’re just in the exact same position that we’re in right now.” [READ MORE]( Andrew Roth, Michigan Advance (September 10, 2022) Nessel files bypass application for Michigan Supreme Court to hear insulin case Retrieved from: [Nessel files bypass application for Michigan Supreme Court to hear insulin case]( --------------------------------------------------------------- AG Nessel joins coalition opposing 'discriminatory' Florida voting law We can protect the integrity of the ballot while still ensuring that everyone has access to it. I gladly stand with my fellow attorneys general in opposing Florida's restrictive new voting law. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined a coalition of 17 attorneys general in opposing a Florida law that critics call discriminatory. Florida's Senate Bill 90 revises "requirements governing the acceptance of voter registration applications," limits "the duration of requests for vote-by-mail ballots" and prohibits "certain solicitation activates within a specified area surrounding a drop box." After the bill was signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in May 2021, several groups including the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and Florida Rising filed lawsuits in federal court against the bill. The groups challenged SB 90 by claiming it violated the First, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act and Voting Rights Act protections. "This is yet another attempt to disenfranchise those who use mail-in and drop-box voting the most," Nessel said. "That the State of Florida is defending this bill in court is dubious because the bill has no defense." "Its intent is clear: to favor one party over another in elections by suppressing votes of minorities," Nessel said. "SB 90 is a solution in search of a problem. Large-scale voter fraud is extremely rare. We can protect the integrity of the ballot while still ensuring that everyone has access to it. I gladly stand with my fellow attorneys general in opposing Florida's restrictive new voting law." [READ MORE]( Brandon Chew, Up North Live (September 6, 2022) AG Nessel joins coalition opposing 'discriminatory' Florida voting law Retrieved from: [AG Nessel joins coalition opposing 'discriminatory' Florida voting law]( --------------------------------------------------------------- The demise of Roe v Wade has fired up the Democrats The Economist called my opponent "perhaps the most ardent 'Stop the Steal' enthusiast running to be a state’s top law-enforcement officer anywhere in the country." In addition to his NO EXCEPTIONS abortion stance, his complete disregard for the will of the voters could spell an end to democracy in MI. Photo courtesy of Getty Images, The Economist Democrats up and down the country have been energized by the demise of Roe. But the issue could do more to decide the course of elections in Michigan than in any other state. One reason is that Michigan’s abortion policy rests on a knife-edge. Upon the court’s ruling, an obsolete law passed in 1931 was due to come into effect, which would have completely banned the procedure unless the life of the mother was at risk. Courts have temporarily suspended it, following months of legal wrangling. Hundreds of thousands in Michigan have signed on to a ballot initiative to protect abortion rights through an amendment to the state constitution. More referendums are coming. Four other states have already decided to put abortion on the ballot in November. But unlike electorates in California, Kentucky, Montana and Vermont, that in Michigan is more evenly split. Minimal polling suggests for now that two-thirds of voters would support enshrining the right in Michigan’s constitution. Republican candidates have staked out unusually extreme positions on two issues: abortion, and Mr Trump’s Big Lie that the presidential election in 2020 was stolen. In Michigan the Republican nominees for governor, attorney-general and secretary of state all hold this view. Even Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, has griped about the “candidate quality” of the party’s nominees, most of whom were handpicked by Mr Trump. All this has handed Democrats a second line of attack in the run-up to the general elections. “I’m not using hyperbole when I say the consequences will be deadly [if the 1931 law goes into effect]”, says Dana Nessel, the Democratic state attorney-general, who is running for another term. Her Republican opponent, Matt DePerno, is perhaps the most ardent “Stop the Steal” enthusiast running to be a state’s top law-enforcement officer anywhere in the country. “If you don’t have someone in this office that is incredibly aggressive about defending the will of the people,” says Ms Nessel, “you simply will not have a democracy in the state of Michigan anymore.” Come November 8th, that closing argument may prove to have been effective—and not just in the state of Michigan. [READ MORE]( The Economist, The Economist (September 8, 2022) The demise of Roe v Wade has fired up the Democrats Retrieved from: [The demise of Roe v Wade has fired up the Democrats]( --------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for being a part of Dana's re-election campaign! Sending emails is a crucial way to keep supporters like you updated on Dana's fight for justice and progress. Plus, this campaign is fueled by grassroots supporters like you! 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