Attorney General Bill Schuette, a Republican candidate for governor, has determined that existing state laws do not bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
In a legal opinion sure to reverberate through his campaign for governor, Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette on Friday deemed “invalid” a new agency interpretation that had extended anti-discrimination protections to gay and transgender Michigan residents.
It’s difficult to imagine a more profound repudiation of history. After all, Michigan is the home of the labor movement, an important supporter of the civil rights movement; there is probably no one organization that did so much as the U.A.W. to help minorities, especially blacks and immigrants, into the middle class.
So now in Michigan, the home of some of the world’s finest universities (including my alma mater, Michigan Tech), you can lawfully discriminate against the innate trait of sexual orientation, but you cannot discriminate against the chosen imbecilities and character failures of religion.
Don’t look for Michigan to restore itself to the first tier of economically important states any time soon.