LANSING – An 11-year-old state requirement that school districts collect information like pupil counts and financial data and submit it to the Center for Educational Performance and Information violated the Constitution’s prohibition against the state placing unfunded mandates on local governments, a divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The ruling disposes of the last piece of the long-running case Adair v. State of Michigan (SC Docket No. 137424) in which 456 school districts sued the state for violating the Headlee Amendment against unfunded mandates. Dissenting justices said the ruling opened the floodgates for Headlee lawsuits.

Affirming the crux of the Court of Appeals’ ruling, a 4-3 Supreme Court majority upheld the Court of Appeals and a special master, which issued a declaratory judgment that the state had violated the ban on unfunded mandates. The suit did not seek monetary damages, but the result raises questions about what funds the state might have to provide going forward. The Supreme Court also reversed the Court of Appeals and ruled the state would have to pay the school districts’ attorney fees.

The key question in the case surrounded whether the school districts had to show the amount of increased costs placed upon them in detail. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly and signed by Justice Michael Cavanagh, Justice Diane Hathaway and Justice Elizabeth Weaver, held that districts do not need to provide such detail.

“A plaintiff must show that the state required a new activity or service or an increase in the level of activities or services,” Kelly wrote. “If no state appropriation was made to cover the increased burden on local government, the plaintiff need not show the amount of increased costs. It is then the state’s burden to demonstrate that no state funding was required because the requirement did not actually increase costs or the increased costs were not necessary.”

Kelly wrote that the state made no such appropriation for the districts implementation of reporting requirements, nor for the districts’ ongoing duties on the subject.

“Rather, the districts were expected to take monies from discretionary funds to cover the costs associated with their data-collection and reporting obligations,” she wrote.

The dissenting justices ripped the opinion, saying it would lead a flood of Headlee litigation and misinterpreted the Constitution.

Justice Stephen Markman, writing the dissent, said the burden always remains on the plaintiff in Headlee cases and the plaintiff must detail increased necessary costs.

“If plaintiffs are not required to demonstrate that a state requirement will, in fact, result in the actual reallocation of funds or out-of-pocket expenses, then there has been no showing of any necessary increased costs that will be incurred,” he wrote. “The Legislature will effectively be required to enact an accompanying appropriation to every statute that mandates an increase in the level of an activity or service – even if there are no necessarily increased costs, and even if any such increased costs are merely de minimis – unless it is willing to undertake the risk that the state will eventually be able to sustain in court its burden of proof that a (Headlee) plaintiff’s costs did not increase or that any such increased costs were not necessary.”

Signing the dissent were Justice Maura Corrigan and Justice Robert Young Jr.

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