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In July, more than a half million workers in the state retirement system were forced to start contributing three percent of their salaries. As Mike Vasilinda tells us, more than a billion dollars a year in state spending is at stake in a legal fight over whether state lawmakers can make a change to the Florida Retirement System.

Deborah Hogan sat in the court room’s front row. She is a health department nurse from West Palm Beach, and says she accepted a lower salary because of the retirement benefits. Now she’s one of the people suing the state to keep from paying three percent of her salary toward that retirement.

“That three percent, out of an already lower salary, is an impact,” Hogan said. “It is a pay decrease. And again, it affects our pension, our retirement.”

Lawyers for the employees hang their case on a 1974 statute that says that fully paid pension are part of the employment contract and can’t be changed.

“Your Honor, that’s what we have here,” Florida Education Association Attorney Ron Meyer said. “We have a contract that the legislature made and the legislature now can’t simply get out of by saying, well we don’t have to fund it.”

Staff lawyers for Rick Scott also watched from the front row as well, while outside counsel making five hundred dollars an hour argued the state’s case.

In the end, Scott’s lawyers cited a Florida Supreme Court Case saying that earned benefits are earned, but future benefits are not.

“It happens only in the future, it impacts only the benefits that are earned in the future,” Attorney Doug Hinson said. “It does not take away a dime from what the employees have earned.”

The employees who pass through these doors to the state capitol, will have to keep paying the three percent for the foreseeable future. That’s because this decision isn’t going to be made at the circuit court, but over here at Florida’s Supreme Court.