In June 2017, Young announced his intentions to run against Debbie Stabenow in the 2018 senate race,[3] but later dropped out saying he could not raise enough money for his campaign.

Young has recounted how he was raised in a city that was operating under de facto segregation at the time; when he was a child, his family was one of the first to integrate northwest Detroit.

[1][6] At his investiture ceremony on February 18, 1999, Judge Damon Keith, of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals administered the oath of office to Young.

[15] On March 29, 2017, Justice Young announced that he would retire from the Michigan Supreme Court by April 30 of that year to return to private practice.

[17] In April 2017, Young confirmed he was being courted to seek the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2018.

Decided one year before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Young's decision held that the Michigan Constitution only allowed eminent domain for "public use" and determined that three circumstances justified condemnation through eminent domain to a private entity: "(1) where 'public necessity of the extreme sort' requires collective action; (2) where the property remains subject to public oversight after transfer to a private entity; and (3) where the property is selected because of 'facts of independent public significance,' rather than the interests of the private entity to which the property is eventually transferred.

'"[19] Hathcock overturned the 1981 Michigan Supreme Court decision in Poletown Neighborhood Council v. Detroit, which Young criticized as a "radical and unabashed departure from the entirety of this Court's...eminent domain jurisprudence" because it "concluded, for the first time in the history of our eminent domain jurisprudence, that a generalized economic benefit was sufficient under [the Michigan Constitution] to justify the transfer of condemned property to a private entity.

The doctrine of standing (law) involves the ability of a person or corporation to bring a lawsuit, and thus assert legal rights and duties in the courts.

"[21] As the Court had previously articulated in Lee v. Macomb County Board of Comm'rs (2001), which applied principles of federal standing doctrine,[23] standing requires a plaintiff to have suffered "an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, and (b) 'actual or imminent, not "conjectural" or "hypothetical" that has a "causal connection" to "the conduct complained of" and which is "likely" to be "redressed by a favorable decision" by a court.

"[21] Special Prosecutor William Forsyth, who has been tasked with investigating the details surrounding Larry Nassar's crimes, has accused MSU of obstructing his probe by withholding critical information under Young's guidance.