Cite as: 503 U. S. 181 (1992)
Opinion of the Court
but it was not passed. Senate Bill 834, introduced on May 26, 1982.
Meanwhile, petitioners continued to attempt to persuade the Michigan courts that the 1981 statute should be applied to workers injured before its effective date. In 1985, petitioners' interpretation was accepted by the Michigan Supreme Court. Chambers v. General Motors Corp., decided with Franks v. White Pine Copper Div., Copper Range Co., 422 Mich. 636, 375 N. W. 2d 715. The court held that the benefit coordination provision applied to all payment periods after its effective date, regardless of the date the employee had been injured. The court also held that application of the coordination provisions to employees injured before 1982 did not violate the Contract Clause or the Due Process Clause.
After the decision in Chambers, employers who had not coordinated benefits for employees injured before 1982 began to demand reimbursement from these employees. See Jones, Firms Cut Checks for Disabled Workers, Detroit Free Press, Nov. 29, 1985, p. 3A. The Michigan Legislature responded almost immediately by introducing legislation to overturn the court's decision. On October 16, 1985, before the Michigan Supreme Court had ruled on the motion for rehearing in Chambers, House Bill 5084 was introduced. As amended and passed by the House on January 29, 1986, the bill repudiated the Chambers decision, declared that employers who had not coordinated benefits before the Chambers decision could not seek reimbursement from affected employees, and required employers who had coordinated benefits before Chambers to reimburse their employees. Meanwhile, the Senate passed its own version of the bill, Senate Bill 67, also disapproving the Chambers decision and providing that employers could not require employees to reimburse them for benefits not coordinated after 1982. The Senate bill was amended by a Conference Committee to provide for reimbursement of benefits withheld as a result of coordina-
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