Special legislative sessions in Maine have been used to create budgets using a simple majority dating back to 2005. However, they’ve become a more apparent issue in recent sessions given that Gov. Janet Mills has declared a special session every budget cycle since 2021. With this becoming a greater problem (and occurrence) during biennial budget negotiations, Maine legislators should act to limit the ability of the governor to declare special sessions.
To recap from our previous blog post last year, non-emergency bills passed in legislative sessions do not take effect until 90 days after the session ends. Each of the two regular sessions starts at a legally mandated time and ends at a specific time, depending on whether the year is odd or even.
According to the Constitution of Maine, for a special session to occur, either a majority of each party of the Legislature (including even the smallest parties) must agree to have a special session, or the governor can call a special session due to an “extraordinary occasion.”
The issue is that an “extraordinary occasion” has never been defined by either the Legislature or the courts. Thus, Gov. Mills (or any governor) can simply interpret the Constitution to mean she can call a special session whenever she wants.
She and the Maine Legislature have been passing biennial budgets since 2021, typically on a simple majority vote sometime around March, then ending the regular session and initiating a special session within a matter of days. For example, in 2025, the Legislature adjourned on March 20, 2025, and a special session was declared on March 21.
Since the fiscal year for Maine starts on July 1 and the regular session usually ends in mid-June, the early adjournment and special session called by the governor circumvents the normal 90-day waiting period because the session technically ended in March. This allows the majority budget bill to take effect before the start of the next fiscal year.
Otherwise, lawmakers would need to make the budget an emergency bill to avoid a government shutdown, which requires a supermajority in each chamber to pass. Nowadays, it’s much easier for majority Democrats to pass a budget on a simple majority vote and have Gov. Mills declare an “extraordinary occasion” than it is to reach across the aisle and compromise with the minority party.
After the last majority budget maneuver in 2023, a group of legislators, taxpayers and the nonprofit organization Respect Maine, filed a lawsuit against Gov. Mills, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House on April 10, 2023. The plaintiffs argued that they were injured by the defendants’ actions and that there was no true “extraordinary occasion” to declare a special session. Gov. Mills and her co-defendants argued that she could declare a special session for any reason. A lower court ruled for the defendants, but the plaintiffs appealed to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court and had oral arguments on May 8, 2024.
Sadly, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court mostly ruled for the defendants. They dismissed the case based on a lack of standing rather than considering whether Gov. Mills’ actions were permitted under the Maine Constitution. Their 19-page ruling, made on August 13, 2024, outlined why the taxpaying members of the public, legislators, and Respect Maine lacked standing to sue the defendants for the special session being called on a whim.
The opinion focused primarily on the two state legislators, Rep. Rudnicki and Rep. Greenwood, and whether they had standing to sue. The court disagreed with their argument that their vote to not call a special session had been discounted by the governor’s declaration of an extraordinary occasion.
The court ruled that the governor’s actions were independent from the legislators’ votes, which in their eyes meant the representatives had no concrete injury. Additionally, they wrote that the representatives being forced to come in was essentially part of their job as legislators, and couldn’t constitute an injury either. However, the court didn’t finish there.
Maine’s high court also decided that the Legislature “had the exclusive authority to adjourn immediately, to determine the agenda of the special session, or to vote not to pass any legislation.” This seems to imply that no one in the Legislature would have standing to sue, because even the body as a whole could simply vote to end the session and would therefore have no injury in the court’s eyes.
Considering all parts of the ruling, it seems that there are no valid plaintiffs for a lawsuit regarding the origins of a special session called by the governor, according to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court. Although it isn’t explicitly said, rather just implied, even the legislative body wouldn’t have standing to sue under the ruling because they could just end the session and remedy any injury. In theory, the governor could repeatedly call special sessions, and the Legislature could repeatedly end the session whenever it was called.
Since the court clearly has no intention of checking the executive branch’s powers, it’s time for the Legislature to take action rather than allowing this to continue. The Legislature needs to create a law not only to define an extraordinary occasion, but also to grant legal standing to members of the Legislature.
If the Legislature fails to act on this crucial issue, dysfunction in Augusta will continue to worsen. Further expansion of majoritarian control, silencing of minority party members and the ceding of power to the executive branch will be unavoidable until the Legislature finally acts to check and balance the powers of the governor.
Jack Cullen is an incoming sophomore at University of Maine Farmington studying Actuarial Science and Computer Science. He currently serves as a public policy intern at Maine Policy Institute.