Michigan Agent Orange Award Exclusion

The Agent Orange award exemption act, 1990 PA 144, is two sections long and does one thing. A department or agency of the state that grants assistance, provides services, or charges for services based upon income level shall not take into consideration as income or resources an amount paid to a person that is a judgment or settlement for damages suffered as a result of exposure to Agent Orange. The reach is broad in a way that is easy to underestimate. It is not confined to a particular program. Any state department or agency that means-tests anything is bound: the sliding-scale charge at a state facility, a state-administered assistance program, a service fee set by income. Section 35.1072 applies to income and to resources, so the money is protected both as it arrives and as it sits in an account afterwards. It reaches the person, not only the veteran. The section says "an amount paid to a person", so a surviving spouse or child who receives a share of a judgment or settlement is covered on the same terms. Agent Orange is defined by reference to section 5701 of the Public Health Code, MCL 333.5701. What it does not do. It does not touch federally administered means tests, and it does not exclude VA compensation awarded for an Agent Orange presumptive condition, which is a benefit rather than a judgment or settlement for damages. VA compensation is separately outside Michigan taxable income because it is outside federal adjusted gross income, and is separately excluded from the Michigan Veterans Trust Fund's own assessment only to the extent that fund's policies provide. The class of people it was written for is now small, since the Agent Orange product liability settlement fund made its final payments in the 1990s. It is recorded here because it remains on the books unamended and because a state caseworker applying an income test has no discretion about it.