Not Voting—0
In The Chair: Moss
The Senate agreed to the title of the bill.
Protest
Senator Runestad , under his constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of Senate Bill No. 111.
Senator Runestad’s statement is as follows:
Senate Bill No. 111’s—that we just voted on—ostensible purpose was to protect vulnerable adults, and it easily could have been written to accomplish that. Instead, it establishes a system that vastly overextends the purpose of the personal protection orders. Under this bill, a vulnerable adult, which is defined as anyone over 60 years old or their court-appointed guardian, would be able to request a PPO on someone for a vast variety of reasons, up to and including, and most seriously, whether the accused purchases or possesses a firearm. That means if the accuser is able to convince the court that there’s a reasonable cause that the accused might someday buy a firearm, then the court is required to issue the PPO. This is absolutely unconstitutional. A further constitutional concern within the bill is that if a PPO is ordered, then the accused is thereafter barred from purchasing or possessing a firearm. In addition to these very concerning constitutional provisions, the bill does not lay out any clear means to determine relationships between the 60-year-old making the request and the person they’re accusing, as is currently in the PPO bills. This bill is very, very poorly crafted and could easily have been written in such a way to appropriately accomplish its purpose. Instead, it is a grave and dangerous infringement upon our constitutional rights and should have been voted down.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 112, entitled
A bill to amend 1931 PA 328, entitled “The Michigan penal code,” by amending section 159g (MCL 750.159g), as amended by 2022 PA 174.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: