The Supreme Court of Illinois has unanimously yanked the plug on a downstate court’s ruling that found the Illinois Commerce Commission breached due process by not notifying landowners their properties were in the path of proposed power lines, saying the lower court overstepped its authority, although two justices disagreed with the majority’s reasoning, calling it a “threat to individual rights.”
The decision was delivered by Justice Robert R. Thomas, with concurrence from Justices Mary Jane Theis, P. Scott Neville Jr., Anne M. Burke and Chief Justice Lloyd A. Karmeier, with special concurrence from Justice Rita B. Garman. Justice Thomas L. Kilbride dissented in part.
Ameren Transmission Company is a subsidiary of Ameren Corporation, which is based in St. Louis and supplies power to more than 3 million electric and natural gas customers.
Ill. Supreme Court Justice Robert R. Thomas
In November 2012, Ameren sought permission from the Illinois Commerce Commission to string high-voltage transmission lines through several Illinois counties, including Edgar County, which is in east central Illinois along the Indiana border. The commission sent notice of Ameren’s request to several thousand potentially affected property owners.
The commission ended up authorizing a route for the lines that impacted a number of Edgar County landowners, who said they were never told they could be affected until after Ameren was given the go-ahead. They asked the commission to give them a hearing, but the commission refused.
The landowners argued their rights to due process were violated and took their case to the Illinois Fourth District Appellate Court in Springfield, but lost. Ameren then filed 35 eminent domain actions against the landowners in Edgar County Circuit Court.
The landowners fought the eminent domain suits, again on grounds the commission denied due process. Circuit Judge Craig DeArmond agreed in September 2017, saying the landowners were deprived of the “opportunity to participate or object.” DeArmond also found a section of the Public Utilities Act, under which the commission acted, conflicted with due process.
DeArmond threw out the eminent domain actions and Ameren appealed directly to the state high court.
On review, Justice Thomas found DeArmond was sitting as a court of general jurisdiction, tasked with adjudicating the merits of Ameren’s eminent domain suit, not whether the commission breached due process.
“The legality and constitutionality of the Commission’s proceedings was a question beyond the circuit court’s power to decide,” Thomas observed, adding such a question belongs to an appellate court.
Thomas reversed DeArmond on jurisdictional grounds, not on the substance of the landowners’ case.
Justices Garman and Kilbride agreed the circuit court ruling should be overturned, but disagreed with the majority’s reasoning the circuit court did not have jurisdiction.
“The majority finds that the circuit court had jurisdiction to take away defendants’ property but lacked jurisdiction to consider defendants’ constitutional challenge to that taking,” Garman noted.
Garman and Kilbride both said the majority analysis was “flawed” and “raises significant threats to individual rights.”
In particular, Garman asserted the majority interpretation “dramatically expands the General Assembly’s power to reduce circuit courts’ jurisdiction.”
Springfield lawyer Lisa Petrilli argued for Ameren before the state high court, with Michael Reagan, of Ottawa, arguing on the landowners’ behalf.