A few days after a southern Illinois attorney filed a new flurry of lawsuits challenging Gov. JB Pritzker’s emergency COVID-19 orders in six downstate counties, the governor has asked the Illinois Supreme Court to consolidate five of those lawsuits, to allow them to be heard by one judge in Springfield.
On July 27, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, on behalf of Pritzker, petitioned the state Supreme Court to step into the latest iteration of the long running legal fight between attorney Tom DeVore and Pritzker over the limits of the governor’s authority to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Critically, allowing one court to resolve the threshold question will avoid the expenditure of resources before multiple courts, as well as the risk of conflicting rulings and ensuing public confusion,” Raoul wrote in the July 27 motion. “The prospect of public confusion and wasted resources is particularly detrimental in the present context of a global pandemic, where statewide consistency on public safety directives is critical.”
Late last week, DeVore, in his own name and on behalf of several other named plaintiffs, filed a series of lawsuits and court motions in six downstate counties, again challenging powers claimed by Pritzker under state law to regulate and control the state economy and the lives and movements of Illinois residents in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The new lawsuits were filed in Clinton, Richland, Edgar, Bond and Sangamon counties.
They were essentially identical to a new count added to a lawsuit pending in southern Illinois court since April, when state Rep. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) became the first to legally challenge Pritzker’s use of emergency powers in response to the pandemic.
In that new count and the five new lawsuits, Bailey and the other plaintiffs now assert Pritzker has improperly based his assertion of emergency powers on a pandemic that has not produced a statewide health disaster that is as disastrous as the governor has asserted.
The complaints point to raw statistics, which generally show fewer than 1% of all residents in those downstate counties have been confirmed to have been infected by the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and much fewer have died of the illness.
While the complaints acknowledge a health emergency may exist in some areas of the state, they assert Pritzker has wrongly declared disasters and imposed emergency orders statewide, even in areas in which no true public health emergency now exists.
In the motion to the state Supreme Court, Pritzker and Raoul assert such statistics are essentially meaningless, as COVID-19 is a highly infectious disease, which can spread rapidly.
They argue the mere “threat” of the infectious virus should allow the governor, under the law, to declare a disaster statewide, for as long as the governor believes the threat still exists.
“… The infective nature of the virus … means that the threat persists even in areas with a relatively low infection rate,” Raoul wrote in the July 27 motion.
The attorney general and governor argue the cases should be brought before one judge to conserve resources, and reduce the risk of contradictory rulings from different judges.
They further accused DeVore of filing these lawsuits in different jurisdictions to continue efforts to “sow confusion” and “uncertainty” within the state over the governor’s powers. To date, they noted, all courts that have heard cases challenging the governor’s authority, but one, have sided with Pritzker’s take on the law.
In early July, in Clay County Circuit Court, a judge granted judgment to Bailey and DeVore on the question of the governor’s authority. However, Pritzker and Raoul asserted Bailey and DeVore have consistently taken actions to avoid appellate review, and prevent those decisions from being overturned.
“If the court concludes that the Governor has the authority to declare a statewide disaster in light of COVID-19, then that will end the analysis without consideration of the facts in each individual county concerning the number of residents who have tested positive for COVID-19,” Raoul wrote. “As such, it would make sense and conserve judicial resources for one court to answer that predominant question of law.”
Further, Raoul asserted Springfield, in Sangamon County, provides the best place to hear these cases, as it is the seat of Illinois state government, and within a short distance of several of the other counties in which DeVore filed suit.