A Macomb County judge ruled Friday that the names of four longtime Warren City Council members are to be removed from the ballot in a term limit lawsuit that was filed by another council candidate.

"It's a revolution in Warren city politics," said Jim Kelly, attorney for Connor Berdy, the candidate who filed the lawsuit May 10 against Warren City Clerk Sonja Buffa, the Warren City Election Commission and Macomb County Clerk Fred Miller.

The court declared that Council President Cecil St. Pierre and Councilmen Scott Stevens, Steven Warner and Robert Boccomino "are ineligible to be candidates for the Warren City Council," and that the defendants are to remove their names from the list of eligible names to run in the August primary, according to an opinion from Circuit Court Judge James Maceroni provided by the plaintiff.

The four council members are a majority of the seven-member city council.

The opinion came 11 days after a May 20 court hearing.

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Kelly said an appeal can be filed, but it must be done quickly, as the ballots are expected to be printed very soon.

In a news release, Berdy said: "this was a thorough 11-page opinion that the Judge spent several days working on. We fully expect it will be upheld if the City appeals. It's a new chapter for Warren city government."

Berdy and St. Pierre were running for at-large council seats, while the other three council members were running in three different district council races.

Rob Huth, who represents Buffa and the city election commission, said in an email:

“This issue was litigated in 2015 in the Macomb Circuit Court and Michigan Court of Appeals with a different result. We respectfully disagree with this decision and will look to the Michigan Court of Appeals to let the voters decide who should serve on Warren City Council.”

In 2015, a different council candidate challenged how the city interpreted its term limits law in court. The question hinged on how long council members may serve in office.

Warren voters set term limits for the city's elected officials in 1998 of three terms or 12 years. In 2010, voters approved two changes to the city charter that cut the council from nine to seven members and created five district and two at-large council seats.

In December 2014, former Warren City Attorney David Griem opined that council is a bicameral legislative body, consisting of district and at-large seats, and that a member who has been term-limited in a district seat (three terms or 12 years) can then run for an at-large seat and vice versa.

St. Pierre has served six terms while the other three councilmen have served three terms, according to the opinion.

An attorney for the county said county officials are aware of the judge's decision, will follow the decision and will continue to monitor the situation.

Stevens said: "this is typical Warren politics."

He said while he was not named in the lawsuit, but is the subject of it, he could take no action. He said he will decide during the weekend whether to be adjoined to the case.

Stevens said Berdy "needed to get some attention. He needed to get his name out there." Stevens said that based on the prior city attorney opinion and prior court rulings on the issue, he assumed he had the right to run again.

Boccomino said he respected the judge's decision and that whatever the outcome, it was expected that an appeal would be filed. He said an appeal would be filed Monday.

Boccomino said he would wish it would "be up to the voters versus a judge to decide" whether the voters should or shouldn't re-elect him.

St. Pierre said that he filed for council based on the prior judicial opinions from the circuit court and the Court of Appeals in his favor.

He said that he believes the judge should have looked at the timeliness of this filing. He said that he could have run for another office in the city and other people who were qualified could have run for council but chose not to because incumbents were running.

“A lot of people got cheated from possibly running,” he said.

Warner could be immediately reached by phone late Friday.

Contact Christina Hall: chall@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter: @challreporter.