Michigan Supreme Court ruling to raise state minimum wage over next five years

Tipped workers, including wait staff , bartenders, and others, will soon see their wages rise in Michigan .

The Michigan Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an amended version of the state's 2018 Wage Act and Earned Sick Time Act was unconstitutional. The law was originally passed as a ballot initiative aimed at raising Michigan's minimum wage and removing the tip credit, which allowed tipped employees to be paid as little as 38% of the minimum wage.

The state legislature amended much of the language used in the original proposal, removing tipped wage increases, and was signed off by then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican. The state's Supreme Court ruling means the original version of the two laws will go into effect. The change will give tipped workers minimum wage protections and 1 1/2 hours of paid time off for every hour of overtime worked rather than pay.

"In sum, by adopting the Wage Act and the Earned Sick Time Act and then later stripping those acts of their key features in the same legislative session, the Legislature unconstitutionally violated the people's initiative rights," Justice Elizabeth Welch, a Democratic-nominated jurist, wrote in the majority opinion on Wednesday.

"Accordingly, we hold that the Amended Wage Act and the Amended Earned Sick Time Act are unconstitutional," Welch continued in the 4-3 opinion.

The original minimum wage and paid leave proposals will go into effect on Feb. 21, 2025.

Michigan's minimum wage is $10.33 per hour and will increase by at least $2 per hour in February to be adjusted for inflation. The minimum wage will continue to increase after 2025 and is estimated to be $15 per hour by 2028.

At the same time, the tipped minimum wage will increase 48% of the traditional minimum wage in February 2025, likely around $6 an hour. The tipped minimum wage in the state is currently $3.93 an hour.

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Under the initiative and the court ruling, the tipped minimum wage will gradually move to 100% of the regular minimum wage over the next five years following 2025. That increase was originally supposed to happen from 2019 to 2024.

"We deserved to get a raise in 2018, but that was taken away from us unconstitutionally, and now the courts have recognized that we should have gotten an increase all along," James Hawk, a restaurant worker from Detroit, told the Detroit News. "We all deserve a full minimum wage with tips on top."