MICHIGAN SUPREME COURT VACATES ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO APPEAL IN WORKERS’ COMPENSATION CASE
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 18, No. 5, August 9, 2004

In an appeal from a Michigan Court of Appeals decision finding that undocumented workers are covered by Michigan’s workers’ compensation law and are entitled to full medical benefits if injured on the job, but that their right to wage-loss benefits ends at the time that the employer “discovers” they are unauthorized to work, the Michigan Supreme Court has vacated its previous order granting the parties’ motion to appeal.  This means that the lower court’s decision, Sanchez et al. v. Eagle Alloy, Inc., 254 Mich. App. 651, 658 N.W.2d 510, remains as the binding precedent regarding undocumented workers’ right to workers’ compensation benefits in Michigan. 

In this case, the employer had “discovered” the plaintiffs’ lack of work authorization when, as the court of appeals put it, the workers “admitted use of fake documents to obtain employment.”  Relying on the U.S. Supreme Court’s reasoning in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB, 122 S. Ct. 1275 (2002), the court of appeals concluded that the plaintiffs’ use of fake documents to obtain employment constituted a “commission of a crime” under the Michigan workers’ compensation statute.  The employer had fired the workers after receiving “no-match letters” from the Social Security Administration (SSA) stating that the Social Security numbers the workers were using were invalid. (For more on Sanchez, see “Michigan Court of Appeals Limits Workers’ Compensation Recovery in Cases Involving Undocumented Workers,” Immigrants’ Rights Update, Feb. 21, 2003, p. 11.  For a summary of the Hoffman decision, see “Supreme Court Bars Undocumented Worker from Receiving Back Pay Remedy for Unlawful Firing,” IRU, Apr. 12, 2002, p. 10.)

In vacating its order, the Michigan Supreme Court left undisturbed the lower court’s rejection of the employer’s argument that the undocumented workers’ rights under the workers’ compensation scheme should be limited because they had entered into an “illegal contract,” thus rendering the employment relationship void.  In a dissenting opinion, the supreme court’s Justice Markman chastised the majority for not addressing the underlying issues in the case, which the justice considered to be “important not only for their impact upon [undocumented immigrants], but equally for their impact upon the rule of law and the meaning of citizenship.”  Like the U.S. Supreme Court’s analysis in Hoffman, Markman’s dissent focuses on the workers’ wrongdoing.  “There is no dispute that illegality permeates the relationship between the parties in this case,” Markman wrote.  “Plaintiffs obtained forged Social Security and alien identification cards and lied on their employment applications with defendant with regard to their immigration and Social Security status.”  Also: “It is well-established that a promise or agreement requiring the performance of a criminal or tortious act is illegal, unenforceable, and void.”

The dissent asks, rhetorically, whether the decision of the court of appeals presumes “that Michigan law is neutral as between illegal aliens and persons who are citizens or otherwise lawfully within the United States, or is the presumption that illegal aliens do not constitute a part of the civil community in the same way as do citizens and legal aliens?”  It concludes, “The overarching issue here pertains to the cognizance that the legal system will take of the uniquely unlawful behavior of illegal aliens, an unlawful behavior that is ongoing and omnipresent.” 

Sanchez et al. v. Eagle Alloy, Inc., 2004 Mich. LEXIS 1557 (July 23, 2004).

Home | About NILC | Publications | Community Education Materials
Immigrants & Employment | Immigrants & Public Benefits | Immigration Law & Policy
Trainings | Links
California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative