The Michigan Supreme Court granted leave for Rita Williams and Brody McClellan to file amicus curiae briefs in In re Foley, and accepted both filings into the record.
I have done a lot of strange, difficult, and occasionally absurd things over the last four years of this work. This is the one I am proudest of.
On September 14, 2026, the Michigan Supreme Court entered an order in In re Foley granting leave for me to file as amicus curiae, and accepting the brief I submitted on September 11. The same order granted leave to a second individual amicus, Brody McClellan, and accepted his brief, submitted the same day the order came down. Two self-represented amici, granted leave in the same order, in a case now sitting in front of the state’s highest court.
What did the Michigan Supreme Court order on September 14, 2026?
On order of Chief Justice Megan K. Cavanagh, the Court waived Foley’s filing fees for this case only, granted the motions of Rita Williams and Brody McClellan to submit amicus curiae briefs, and accepted both briefs for filing.
What does an accepted amicus brief mean here?
It means both filings are now part of the record the justices will review. It is a procedural order, not a ruling. The Court has not decided whether it will grant leave to appeal, and it has taken no position on the merits.
What happens next?
Foley’s application for leave to appeal is still pending. The Court now considers that application with two accepted amicus filings in front of it, addressing whether an ordinary appeal is an adequate remedy when the alleged problem is the service failure that blocked access to that appeal in the first place.
What the Order Actually Says
The order is short and procedural, and it is worth being precise about what it does and does not do. It waives Foley’s filing fees for this case. It grants leave for two amici, McClellan and me, to file briefs supporting his application for leave to appeal. And it accepts the briefs already submitted. That is the entirety of what the Court decided on September 14. It has not ruled on Foley’s underlying application, and it has not adopted any argument either brief makes.
What My Brief Argues
I filed in my individual capacity, identified as Editor of Clutch Justice, the same way I have filed every amicus brief so far. My brief situates Foley’s service problem inside a pattern I have spent years documenting in Barry County: unreliable notice to litigants, thin record-keeping, and an appellate process that only works if the person affected finds out about an order before the clock runs out on their right to challenge it. The full brief is in the Clutch Justice Amicus Library.
What Brody McClellan’s Brief Argues
McClellan filed in propria persona, identifying himself as Executive Director of the Michigan Association for Equal Shared Parenting PAC, but filing as an individual and not on the organization’s behalf. His brief asks the Court to clarify when an ordinary appeal stops being an adequate remedy for superintending control purposes, specifically when the procedural failure at issue is the nonservice or misdirected service of a domestic relations order and that failure is what kept the litigant from timely appellate review. He draws on the due process notice standard from Mullane v. Central Hanover Bank and Trust Co. and Michigan’s own adequate-remedy case law, and argues that actual knowledge of an order at some point should not be treated as a substitute for the service Michigan’s court rules require. He also raises a structural concern separate from Foley’s individual facts: a 2025 State Court Administrative Office report found that of Michigan’s 83 counties, only Macomb reported an active Friend of the Court Citizen Advisory Committee, the statutory mechanism meant to bring outside public oversight into how local Friend of the Court offices operate.
Clutch is free to read. It isn’t free to produce. Every filing I track, every record I pull, every brief I write comes out of the same one-person operation, on the same limited hours. If this kind of reporting is useful to you, Clutch Confidential membership is what keeps it going.
$10/month ?The Case Behind the Order
Foley’s application traces back to domestic relations proceedings in Barry County Circuit Court, Case No. 2020-000656-DM. On June 23, 2026, he filed a complaint for superintending control in the Court of Appeals, arguing that alleged service failures prevented him from learning about certain orders until after his ordinary 21-day appeal window had closed. The Court of Appeals denied that complaint on August 14, 2026, in Case No. 381330. Foley is now asking the Michigan Supreme Court for leave to appeal that denial. The parties dispute what he knew and when. Nothing in this order resolves that dispute.
What Happens Next
The application for leave to appeal stays pending before the Michigan Supreme Court. The justices now have two accepted amicus filings in front of them alongside the parties’ own briefing. There is no set date for the Court to act on the application itself. Clutch Justice will track the docket and report the next order when it comes.
Show Up: Court Watch, September 16
The Supreme Court order runs on its own track. Foley’s underlying Barry County case keeps moving on a separate one, and it has a hearing on the calendar this week.
Courtrooms are public for a reason. Accountability starts with people willing to show up and pay attention. On Wednesday, September 16 at 3:00 PM, Mark Foley will be before Judge Alspaugh at the Barry County Friend of the Court in Hastings. We are asking court watchers to be there.
This is not about disrupting proceedings or taking sides from the gallery. It is about something simpler: witnessing what happens, taking accurate notes, and helping preserve an independent public record of how the courts operate. When members of the public are present, transparency is stronger. When multiple people are documenting the same proceeding, it becomes harder for important details to disappear into competing recollections later.
Show up. Pay attention. Write down what you actually see and hear. Be a witness. Be the record.
Four years ago I was reading court files at my kitchen table trying to understand why a system that is supposed to protect people kept failing the people in front of it. I did not go to law school. I built this the slow way, one FOIA request and one docket entry at a time. Having the state’s highest court accept my analysis as worth reading, in the same order it accepted someone else’s, is the clearest signal I have gotten yet that the work holds up. I am proud of it, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
