Dearborn Heights City Libraries Patron Conduct Policy

[DanM]

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zigziggityzoo wrote:

DanM wrote:

Run that by Ms. Parker and see what she thinks. If she haspreempted public agencies participating in her district library, she needs to be in compliance with MCL 124.504 and remove regulations of firearms that such public agencies can't "exercise separately".

Nice! Where'd you get your law degree from? Jeez!

Yes, MCL 124.504 is very nice, to my layman mind, in preventing local units of government from getting around preemption through the use of forming so-called "interlocal" or "inter-governmental" entities or agreements.

Essentially, MCL 124.504 limits the power and privileges ofsuch entities or agreementsto the least powerful and/or privileged of the "public agencies" which participate.

In the case of ANY entity or agreement which has as a participant even one "local unit of government", no preempted firearms regulation is allowed, because the language of MCL 124.504 isquite clear that the powers of the entity or agreement are limited to what the participants can"exercise separately".

 

[DrTodd]

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And since a school district can prohibit firearms as it is not listed as a local unit of government under the Preemption Act ("local units of governments" are defined as city, village, township, or county), the library apparently can put into practice a power that may be "exercised separately" by one or more of its public agency parties, i.e. the school district.


Therefore, imho as I am not an attorney, they can apparently prohibit firearms, but your letter is worth a shot. :?

 

[zigziggityzoo]

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DrTodd wrote:

And since a school district can prohibit firearms as it is not listed as a local unit of government under the Preemption Act ("local units of governments" are defined as city, village, township, or county), the library apparently can put into practice a power that may be "exercised separately" by one or more of its public agency parties, i.e. the school district.


Therefore, imho as I am not an attorney, they can apparently prohibit firearms, but your letter is worth a shot. :?

Isn't the problem that they can't ALL exercise that same privilege separately, therefore they can't exercise that privilege jointly?

...any power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately."

Since the city cannot, per MCL 123.1102, the district library cannot, either.

 

[DanM]

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DrTodd wrote:

And since a school district can prohibit firearms as it is not listed as a local unit of government under the Preemption Act ("local units of governments" are defined as city, village, township, or county), the library apparently can put into practice a power that may be "exercised separately" by one or more of its public agency parties, i.e. the school district.


Therefore, imho as I am not an attorney, they can apparently prohibit firearms, but your letter is worth a shot. :?

If the school district is allowed to prohibit firearmsit can continue to prohibit firearmswhen it acts alone, but if it is acting jointly with a preempted local unit of governmentit cannot. That seems to be the plain reading of MCL 124.504. Let's look again at MCL 124.504 and do a breakdown analysis:

"A public agency of this state may exercise jointly with any other public agency of this state . . .any power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately."

Let's say two public agencies, a non-preempted school district (SD)and a preempted city,are "exercising jointly" as parties in a district library.

The powersof the SD are A, B,and C (with C being prohibition of firearms).

The powersof the cityare A, B, and D (with D being some powerthe city has that the SDis not allowed; there are many such powers).

Subject proposed powers of the district library to the test of MCL 124.504 to see if they are allowed:

Proposed power A: is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? Yes; therefore it isallowed.

Proposed power B: is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? Yes; therefore it isallowed.

Proposed power C (prohibition of firearms): is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? No; therefore it isnot allowed.

Proposed power D:is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? No; therefore it isnot allowed.

Proposed power X (some "new" power someone wantsthe district library to exercise, but which is not possessed by either the school district or the city): is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? No; therefore it is not allowed.

 

[a2fireball]

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[a2fireball]

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[a2fireball]

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[a2fireball]

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[a2fireball]

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I followed up with the Ann Arbor District Library with the following email:

Dear Ms. Parker,

Upon further consultation and research, I believe the aforementioned
policy is still in violation of Michigan law.

Although as you stated; Ann Arbor District Library is not a "local unit
of government", MCL 124.504 limits the power and privileges of such
entities or agreements to the least powerful and/or privileged of the
"public agencies" which participate.

In the case of ANY entity or agreement which has as a participant even
one "local unit of government", no preempted firearms regulation is
allowed, because the language of MCL 124.504 is quite clear that the
powers of the entity or agreement are limited to what the participants
can "exercise separately".

Since the City of Ann Arbor is not permitted to ban open carry of
firearms, neither would any entity to which it is partnered.

Please take this under consideration. Some libraries have reworded their
policy to something like:

"Bans...Carrying or displaying firearms or dangerous weapons of any kind
except as permitted by law. "

Thank you for looking into this matter.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Patrick J Clancy

 

[DanM]

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Hey, Patrick. Your follow up letter is nicely worded. Good job.

Could you edit your duplicate posts to delete what you wrote?

 

[DanM]

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[DT deleted. Geez, there seems to be a problem with the forum.]

 

[a2fireball]

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Sorry :cuss: ...not sure what happened there...forum has been doing odd things today :shock:

PC

 

[zigziggityzoo]

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Good Job on the follow up.

Forum is wonky today...

 

[viperar15]

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i think you all have had toooo much coffee this morning and are sooo jittery you dont realize the double and triple tapping of your mouse button!

 

[Veritas]

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No there's been some issues with the forums. I tried to log in a few times earlier and I kept getting error messages saying the server had too many users or some other nonsense. Then when I was able to get logged in, I saw that some of my subscribed topics haven't been emailing me.

These things happen from time to time... I'm sure it all get worked out.

 

[autosurgeon]

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I think as we continue to grow and direct people to this site that we will see this happen from time to time as the system gets overloaded and has to have the bandwidth enlarged!

 

[Veritas]

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I'm not sure that was it. If bandwidth were an issue we'd probably see long lag times. I haven't experienced that yet. More than likely it was probably a problem with the server... they're finicky sometimes. Especially when you lease space on a third-party server that leases space to numerous other sites... which is what most sites like this do. It's usually more cost effective to lease than buying and maintaining your own server.

 

[DrTodd]

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DanM wrote:

DrTodd wrote:

And since a school district can prohibit firearms as it is not listed as a local unit of government under the Preemption Act ("local units of governments" are defined as city, village, township, or county), the library apparently can put into practice a power that may be "exercised separately" by one or more of its public agency parties, i.e. the school district.


Therefore, imho as I am not an attorney, they can apparently prohibit firearms, but your letter is worth a shot. :?

If the school district is allowed to prohibit firearmsit can continue to prohibit firearmswhen it acts alone, but if it is acting jointly with a preempted local unit of governmentit cannot. That seems to be the plain reading of MCL 124.504. Let's look again at MCL 124.504 and do a breakdown analysis:

"A public agency of this state may exercise jointly with any other public agency of this state . . .any power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately."

Let's say two public agencies, a non-preempted school district (SD)and a preempted city,are "exercising jointly" as parties in a district library.

The powersof the SD are A, B,and C (with C being prohibition of firearms).

The powersof the cityare A, B, and D (with D being some powerthe city has that the SDis not allowed; there are many such powers).

Subject proposed powers of the district library to the test of MCL 124.504 to see if they are allowed:

Proposed power A: is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? Yes; therefore it isallowed.

Proposed power B: is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? Yes; therefore it isallowed.

Proposed power C (prohibition of firearms): is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? No; therefore it isnot allowed.

Proposed power D:is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? No; therefore it isnot allowed.

Proposed power X (some "new" power someone wantsthe district library to exercise, but which is not possessed by either the school district or the city): is it a power, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately? No; therefore it is not allowed.

Well, I must admit, I've spent the last week while I was sick researching this and, I have to agree, but not for the reason of MCL 124.504.

I still think that they could, under the wording of MCL 124.504 prohibit firearms. But, I think that the real issue is better discussed in the MCRGO v. Ferndale ruling.

In that ruling, the court explicitly stated that:

"the state's authority to regulate in a specified area of the law is to be exclusive, there is no doubt that municipal regulation is preempted.

Second, preemption of a field of regulation may be implied upon an examination of legislative history.

Third, the pervasiveness of the state regulatory scheme may support a finding of preemption. While the pervasiveness of the state regulatory scheme is not generally sufficient by itself to infer preemption, it is a factor which should be considered as evidence of pre-emption."

That being the case, IMHO, if the State of Michigan wanted to ban firearms from public libraries, they would have done so. Since they chose not to, and the state has complete preemption in the matter, my non-attorney position is that firearms can not be prohibited from being possessed within the Ann Arbor District library.

 

[viperar15]

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Veritas wrote:

I'm not sure that was it. If bandwidth were an issue we'd probably see long lag times. I haven't experienced that yet. More than likely it was probably a problem with the server... they're finicky sometimes. Especially when you lease space on a third-party server that leases space to numerous other sites... which is what most sites like this do. It's usually more cost effective to lease than buying and maintaining your own server.

we ran into this problem MANY times with another popular forum website. it has to do with a combination of the number of users on the forum, bandwidth, and some mysql database tuning. oh... and server resources.

i jinxed it too... cuz i mentioned this problem at the owosso picnic, thinking we wouldn't see it for a long time here... hah! i was fooled!

 

[DanM]

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DrTodd wrote:

I still think that they could, under the wording of MCL 124.504 prohibit firearms. But, I think that the real issue is better discussed in the MCRGO v. Ferndale ruling.

I think my reasoning abovewith MCL 124.504 is solid, especially subjectingeach proposed power of an entityformed from jointly acting agenciesagainst the test of "is itapower, privilege, or authority that the agencies share in common and that each might exercise separately?". Can you poke specific holes in my analysis above? I ask this sincerely, since I do truly want our legal options to be many and strong. Please offer any specific criticism you think of.

In other words, I've broken down what I think is a logical analysis of how to use MCL 124.504 against a district library, thathas one or more lower units of government as parties, in overturning its firearms ban. Can you break down for us herea logical analysisusing MCL 124.504 to support such a ban, under the same circumstances. Precise and step-by-step. I think it would be helpful to either abandoning or strengthening our use of MCL 124.504.

I agree also with your analysis of MCRGO vs Ferndale. Thanks for offering your points about that.