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Michigan’s LGBTQ+ protections pass House

By Journal Staff LANSING — A state bill to provide legal protections for LGBTQ+ people in Michigan got one step closer to becoming law on Wednesday. State House lawmakers voted 64-45 in favor of SB 4, which extends the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. Eight Republicans voted to approve the bill’s passage. The bill passed the Senate on March 1 in a 23-15 vote. Attorney General Dana Nessel issued a statement on Wednesday celebrating the bill’s passage. “This expansion of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act will ...

Union nemesis will get reward for suing over COVID-19 loans

MIDLAND, Mich. (AP) — A conservative economic-policy group will get a $22,500 reward for blowing the whistle on a Michigan teachers union and its insurance arm, which got $12.5 million in government-backed loans during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy filed a lawsuit, arguing that the Michigan Education Association and the Michigan Education Special Services Association, known as MESSA, weren’t eligible for the money. The union and its insurance affiliate repaid the loans with interest in December 2020, a year before the lawsuit was ...

Can parents of Oxford shooter be charged?

DETROIT (AP) — Prosecutors on Tuesday defended charges against the parents of a teenager who killed four students at a Michigan school in 2021, telling an appeals court that extreme drawings and the boy’s fascination with guns should have been a wake-up call on the day of the ...

Barbara Bryant, first woman to lead Census Bureau, has died

ANN ARBOR (AP) — Barbara Everitt Bryant, the first woman to run the U.S. Census Bureau and its leader during the contentious debate over how to compensate for undercounts of minority groups in the 1990 census, has died. She was 96. Bryant’s family said in an email that she died of natural causes Thursday evening, surrounded by family members, in Ann Arbor. In a blogpost, Robert Santos, the current director of the Census Bureau, described Bryant, who oversaw the 1990 count of U.S. residents, as “a trailblazer and a champion of quality survey methods.” “We mourn the loss ...

Judge: Oxford Schools, staff immune from shooting lawsuits

PONTIAC, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan judge has ruled that staff and administrators at Oxford High School cannot be sued for a mass shooting that left four students dead and seven others wounded. Oakland County Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Brennan also dismissed Oxford Community Schools from civil ...

Outdoor opportunities: Park Service seeks Youth Conservation Corps employees

By Journal Staff MUNISING — High school students have the opportunity to get outside, learn and grow this summer — and get paid for it. The Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is seeks students ages 15 through 18 to participate in the Youth Conservation Corps summer employment program. ...