Saying the law could both simultaneously be a subsidy designed to prop up two Illinois nuclear power plants and a legitimate attempt to reduce carbon emissions, a Chicago federal judge has pulled the plug on attempts by a group of power generators and electricity consumers to challenge a recent state law the plaintiffs claimed unconstitutionally used “green energy” goals as a pretext to rig the wholesale electricity generation and supply markets in favor of electricity generation giant Exelon.
A federal judge has granted a win to multinational insurer Cigna, cutting out state law fraud claims from a lawsuit brought by a surgical center asserting the insurer was wrong to deny claims for reimbursement from certain Cigna-insured patients, for whom the surgical center had forgiven much of the bill because the surgical center was outside of those patients' preferred providers network.
The state of Illinois again has asked a Cook County judge to dismiss a Chicago Public Schools lawsuit alleging racial discrimination underlies the way the state funds K-12 public education.
While Illinois state officials have argued the order could amount to little more than “squeezing blood from a stone,” a Chicago federal judge has ordered Illinois’ state government to begin paying more than $586 million a month to cover Medicaid claims, plus an additional $2 billion from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018 to begin reducing its stack of unpaid Medicaid bills.
A Chicago federal judge has stomped on an Indiana wine retailer's suit, which claimed Illinois liquor law unconstitutionally bars him from shipping his products into Illinois, saying the suit fails at the "most basic level." But the seller is asking to reopen the case.
Amid the state of Illinois' sustained budget woes, school districts in Chicago and elsewhere in the state have lined up to ask courts to intervene on their behalf and order the state to pay what they assert is its proper share of education funding.
But history has indicated such lawsuits have limited chances of success.
A federal judge has cleared the way for yet another group of lawsuits demanding the financially-troubled state of Illinois be forced to more promptly process and pay Medicaid claims, saying federal law allows Medicaid recipients and, by extension, health care agencies to sue the state for failing to abide federal law requiring the payment of Medicaid claims “with reasonable promptness.”
A Chicago federal judge has stopped short, so far, of ordering the state of Illinois to place a premium on paying the health insurance organizations, hospitals and others the $2 billion it is estimated the state owes under unpaid Medicaid bills. But the judge said she did not find it reasonable for the state to skimp on Medicaid payments while fully funding its monthly payroll and debt repayments.
Ex-state Senator Mike Noland, D-Elgin, is suing the state of Illinois to force the comptroller to get the money he claimes was denied him during a decade in office - even though he voted for the measure he now claims is illegal.
The outgoing president of the Western Springs Village Board said the State of Illinois, and not counties, should set policy with regard to setting a minimum wage and sick leave policy to avoid a confused hodgepodge of differing pay scales.
After their first attempt to obtain a court order to compel a rewrite of the state's education funding rules was rebuffed, the Chicago Public Schools have renewed their legal challenge, again asking a Cook County judge to force changes in a school funding system they call discriminatory.
As Illinois’ financial, political and legal troubles continue to mount, a new book, issued by one of the state’s leading voices for reform, suggests the questions facing the state can largely be answered by amending the state’s constitution.
The owners of the Mariano’s supermarket chain have carted to federal court a class action lawsuit brought by one of its workers, who claimed the Chicago area grocer has been improperly requiring its employees to use their fingerprints to check in and out for work, without getting the employees’ permission to store their biometric data.
A group of Illinois prison inmates will be allowed to move forward with their class action suit claiming health care provided to inmates in the Illinois Department of Corrections violates constitutional standards.
In the wake of a scathing report from a court-appointed “special master” empowered to investigate political hiring abuses under former Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and other state officials and lawmakers, current Gov. Bruce Rauner has asked for the court’s guidance on whether those improperly hired, thanks to political connections, should now be able to use collective bargaining agreements to leverage the experience they gained in those positions to land in different positions or even move up in the state’s employment ranks.
The state of Illinois doesn’t trample on the rights of non-union home care providers by forcing them to abide by the terms of deals it strikes with a union over care provider pay rates and other terms of the care providers’ “employment,” a federal appeals court has ruled.
The sons of two motorists who were killed in a car accident after their vehicle skidded off a Cook County road are suing several county and state government agencies for allegedly failing to remedy a known road hazard and alert drivers to the dangerous conditions.
In the latest move in the ongoing battle between Illinois state union workers and Gov. Bruce Rauner, a state appeals court has refused the governor’s request to lift a court-ordered stay on the Illinois Labor Relations Board’s finding that the state and its largest union are at an impasse, a move that will impact the ability of Rauner to impose contract terms and of the union to strike.
A University of Chicago student suing the school over anti-male bias built into its sexual assault investigation system is continuing his lawsuit against the school, in which he is demanding $1.35 million, even though the school purportedly dropped its disciplinary action against him, and after he settled with a female student who allegedly triggered the disciplinary action by accusing him of sexual assault.
After years arguing cases before some of the most prestigious courts in the state and the country, a former Illinois solicitor general is coming home to private practice at one of Chicago's most prestigious law firms - a firm at which he worked early in his career.
