The four-year court battle that led to the Supreme Court ruling gay-marriage bans unconstitutional in June cost Michigan taxpayers $1.9 million in legal fees paid to the plaintiffs' attorney team.
The court ordered the state to pay $1.9 million, the vast majority for legal fees, near 5,420-plus labor hours billed at $350 per hour.
April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, of Hazel Park, sued the state in 2012 after narrowly avoiding a car crash that left them wondering what would happen with custody of their three (now four) individually adopted children if one parent were to die.
Michigan law only allows married couples to jointly adopt, and based on the 2004 voter-passed gay-marriage ban, the couple and their children were excluded from the protections of joint adoption.
The Detroit News reports attorney Carole Stanyar, who spent the most time on the case, 2,182 hours netting her a $763,875 fee, received her final payment from the state Wednesday.
"Four years without a paycheck, fronting costs in a case of this magnitude, was certainly hard on our families," Stanyar told The News. "The fee statute was enacted to empower and encourage the vindication of civil rights. I do feel empowered, and very encouraged. So, I guess the law is working as Congress intended."
Dana Nessel worked 1,165 hours for $407,785; Kenneth Mogill, 1,011 hours for $353,920; Robert Sedlar, 237 hours for $83,160; Mary Bonauto, 796 hours for $278,845; and Vickie Henry, less than a week for $11,235.
These costs are separate from any labor hours or extra expenses, such as fees and travel costs for expert testimony, Attorney Bill Schuette's Office incurred in defense of the state gay-marriage ban.
"I'm declining comment at this time," Schuette spokeswoman Andrea Bitely told MLive when asked for the figures in an email Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman, presiding over their initial lawsuit, told the two Hazel Park nurses that challenging adoption laws wouldn't do; they needed to challenge the voter-approved law that really stood in their way -- Michigan's gay marriage ban.
In August, 17 months after Friedman ruled the ban unconstitutional and eight weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with him, putting the issue to rest once and for all, Friedman officiated the couple's wedding in a Southfield ceremony.
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