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An initiative to raise the hourly minimum wage in Michigan to $15 by 2027 will stay off the 2024 ballot, the state Supreme Court ruled, turning down a group's bid to force the state canvassers board to certify the proposal.

The high court unanimously rejected Raise the Wage Michigan's arguments Friday in its mandamus action that the Board of State Canvassers was required to certify the proposal, saying "the court is not persuaded that it should grant the requested relief."

Justice Brian K. Zahra, who agreed with his colleagues, separately wrote that "it is not the role of this court to second guess and question the administration of election disputes properly left to the bipartisan oversight of the Board of State Canvassers."

The proposed measure would have raised the hourly minimum wage to $12 in 2024, bumping it up to $15 per hour by 2027 and increasing it based on inflation. Currently, the minimum wage in the state is set at about $10 per hour.

Raise the Wage Michigan turned to the Supreme Court in October, shortly after the four-person Board of State Canvassers deadlocked 2-2 along party lines on the ballot initiative following concerns raised by Michigan Opportunity. Michigan Opportunity, an intervening defendant, had argued that the proposal was misleading because it would exempt businesses with 20 or fewer employees from the wage law.

The number of businesses the proposal would exempt had in fact changed during the initiative's life, Justice Zahra wrote in Friday's order.

A preapproved version of the proposal decreased the number of employees employers needed to have for the new minimum wage to apply from at least two to one, Justice Zahra said.

But once the group received approval of that language, it circulated for signatures an altered initiative that would have applied minimum wage regulations to employers with 21 or more employees, apparently adding the one next to the two instead of crossing out the latter, Justice Zahra added.

"It was abundantly reasonable for the board to conclude that plaintiff failed to obtain preapproval of an accurate statement of the petition submitted for final approval, which, rather than increasing the minimum wage for all employees, may have served to eliminate it for thousands," Justice Zahra said.

One Fair Wage President Saru Jayaraman said in a statement that 610,000 Michigan voters signed a petition and called the high court's ruling disappointing.

"However, we remain hopeful that the State Supreme Court will overrule the unconstitutional Adopt and Amend Tactics of the 2018 Republican legislature, raising wages for nearly a million Michiganders and protecting the sacred right of citizen referendums," Jayaraman said.

Michigan Opportunity spokesperson John Sellek said in a statement that the state justices made the right call on Friday, adding that "the Board of Canvassers holds the power" to decide if the initiative could land on the ballot.

Sellek said, "One Fair Wage team's sloppy, error-filled efforts resulted in hundreds of thousands of Michigan citizens signing petitions with language that would end the state minimum wage for thousands of workers."

Raise the Wage Michigan is represented by Mark Brewer and Rowan E. Conybeare of Goodman Acker PC.

The Board of State Canvassers is represented by Heather S. Meingast and Erik A. Grill of the Michigan Attorney General's Office.

Michigan Opportunity is represented by Melissa Malerman and Andrea Hansen of Honigman LLP.

The case is Raise the Wage MI v. Board of State Canvassers et al., case number 166312, in the Michigan Supreme Court.