I've been keeping my eye on the progress of this court case (Senate Bill 2100) and yesterday there was an update. If you recall, last July the Florida Legislature passed a law requiring all state employees to begin contributing 3% of their salary towards their pension. A lawsuit for breach of contract was filed, a court hearing held and we are awaiting the judges decision. Meanwhile, the state began taking the money and putting it in the general revenue (not the pension fund) even though the matter is not resolved.
Well, there's been an update relating to the case. The state of Arizona also had similar legislation last year where they imposed a higher % of contribution on the employees. This resulted in a lawsuit for breach of contract. This judge was a little quicker and decided in Dec 2011, that the law change was deemed an unconstitutional impairment of employees contractual rights.
This legal opinion was submitted as a plaintiffs notice of supplemental authority for the judge to consider in her decision which was are still waiting for. We can only hope that the long time (since Oct 11, 2011) it has taken the judge to make her decision means she didn't know what the hell to do. Perhaps this very recent legal decision will sway her mind and we'll see a positive outcome to this. Hopefully, before the legislators decide to keep taking more from the state employees while they're in session now.
