MI Court of Claims halts Lansing earmark process

New Michigan House 2025 rules required a "Member-submitted Legislatively Directed Spending Items" for earmarks. In-person lawmakers present requests in committee, verbalizing what had before been merely a budget line item.

These announcements appear frequently in recent appropriation committee hearing agendas.

The process may soon become even more rigorous.

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Scott McClallen    |    May 22, 2026

Big changes may be coming to Lansing’s earmark process. 

On May 12, the Michigan Court of Claims sided with the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, granting a preliminary injunction that blocks legislators from approving district spending requests unless they clear a constitutionally required two-thirds supermajority in each chamber.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed in May 2025 against the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, targeting grants awarded to private organizations at the behest of individual lawmakers. Among the projects called out: a $1.5 million grant for Jimmy John's Field in Utica and $1 million for Jackson Field in Lansing.

The lawsuit might stop lawmakers from lobbing million-dollar softballs to politically connected and favored private entities, such as baseball stadiums whose owners could easily pay the bills. 

The Michigan Constitution requires a two-thirds supermajority vote before taxpayer dollars flow to private entities. Critics say the earmark process has long bypassed that threshold — bankrolling everything from curling centers and cricket fields to ballet companies and auto shows.

The court carved out exemptions for grants with statewide benefit, such as highway funding and major cultural institutions, though it stopped short of defining those institutions clearly.

James Hohman, the Mackinac Center's fiscal policy director, has argued that if a grant serves the public interest, lawmakers should establish formal criteria and a competitive process — not simply hand money to projects of their own choosing.

Payments on the challenged grants are frozen while the case proceeds toward a final ruling on the merits.