Aug. 13—Maine’s highest court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit arguing that Democratic leaders violated the state constitution last year when they used a procedural maneuver to pass a state budget without any Republican support.
Augusta resident William Clardy, his organization Respect Maine, and two Republican lawmakers filed the suit after the Democrats approved a state budget and briefly adjourned the session before Gov. Janet Mills called a special session so the Legislature could finish its work. The brief adjournment allowed the party-line budget to take effect before the start of the fiscal year. Budgets are typically passed at the end of a legislative session and need bipartisan, two-thirds support to take effect immediately.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court dismissed the case on grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing.
“Despite alleging that they are citizens, taxpayers, voters, and legislators, no plaintiff has suffered an injury sufficient to confer standing to bring this case,” the justices wrote in the decision.
Clardy said he could not comment on the ruling Tuesday because he had not yet had time to review it in detail, except to say the plaintiffs were “obviously disappointed.”
A spokesperson for the Office of the Maine Attorney General — which represented Mills, Speaker of the House Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, and Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash — said the office had no comment on the ruling.
The decision upholds a Kennebec County Superior Court ruling that also dismissed the lawsuit, but on different grounds. The lower court found the governor’s reasons for calling a special session were not subject to judicial review and said Talbot Ross and Jackson were immune from being sued for their alleged conduct.
The case dates back to the 2023 legislative session, in which Democrats passed a state budget in a party-line vote, then temporarily adjourned the session so the spending plan could take effect in time for the start of the next fiscal year on July 1.
A budget passed with two-thirds support can take effect immediately, but one passed with less than two-thirds support takes effect after 90 days.
Mills signed the budget and immediately called the Legislature back into a special session to finish its work on hundreds of bills and to decide what to do with hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus state revenue that wasn’t allocated in the budget.
The plaintiffs, who include Republican Reps. Shelley Rudnicki of Fairfield and Randall Greenwood of Wales, argued that Mills acted unconstitutionally in calling a special session when there was no “extraordinary occasion,” as is required in the state constitution.
They said the bills passed during the special session increased taxes and other costs to Mainers and that because the laws were passed during an unconstitutional session they are at risk of being invalidated.
They asked that the special session be declared unconstitutional and that legislation passed during the session be voided.
In order to have standing to seek relief, the court wrote, the plaintiffs needed to show proof of a “concrete and particularized injury” that isn’t hypothetical and differs from any harm suffered by the public at large. And the justices said that wasn’t the case.
“They demonstrate no direct or personal interest, different from that of the general public, in the special session called by the Governor or in the legislation passed during it,” the decision said.
In limited circumstances, the court said, it has found that taxpayers have standing to contest unlawful government action, but they said the case brought by Clardy and the other plaintiffs didn’t allege that any legislation passed during the special session was on its own unlawful or that their tax dollars would be improperly spent.
Finally, the court wrote that Rudnicki and Greenwood did not have separate standing as lawmakers “because they have failed to meet the basic requirement that they assert an actual, concrete injury arising from the defendants’ conduct.”
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