A Chicago federal judge has sided with Gov. JB Pritzker, rejecting a lawsuit from the village of Orland Park and others in the south suburban community, and ruling Pritzker does not need to follow regular due process and equal protection rules when shutting down businesses to fight the spread of COVID-19.
On Aug. 1, U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood tossed aside yet another legal challenge to the emergency authority and powers claimed by Pritzker amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lawsuit had been filed in June, led by Orland Park Village President Keith Pekau and Tom McMullen, who owns the Brass Tap restaurant in the village.
U.S. DIstrict Judge Andrea Wood
The legal complaint asked the court to curb the ability of Pritzker to lock down businesses and social activities across the state, as he did throughout this spring, in the name of fighting COVID-19.
The village and various individual plaintiffs accused the governor of ignoring state law and trampling constitutional rights.
They also asserted the governor wrongly rejected the village’s rights to institute its own plans for reopening the village’s businesses, including its restaurants. Under Orland Park’s plan, businesses would have been allowed to reopen weeks earlier than Pritzker ultimately allowed this summer.
“The exercise of authority, however well-intentioned, by the Governor, as the elected leader of the state in attempting to protect the public welfare, must be exercised within the confines of constitutional and statutory provisions established by citizens through their elected officials,” Orland Park and its co-plaintiffs asserted in their complaint.
Judge Wood, however, rejected those contentions, broadly backing Pritzker’s authority to exercise state power to respond to pandemics, even if it violates certain constitutional rights. She rejected the request from the plaintiffs for an injunction against Pritzker.
She pointed to the 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Jacobson v Massachusetts, which upheld the authority of states to compel vaccinations.
“… Given the extraordinary, ongoing public-health threat posed by COVID-19, this Court concludes that any infringement of Plaintiffs’ federal constitutional rights would be permissible under Jacobson,” Judge Wood wrote.
Wood specifically rejected the right of the village to sue the state at all. She said the village exists as a political subdivision of the state, and therefore is barred by the Constitution from suing the state government.
She also rejected the arguments from McMullen and his restaurant company.
The Orland Park plaintiffs argued under the Illinois Department of Public Health Act and constitutional principles of due process and equal protection required Pritzker to give businesses the opportunity to contest Pritzker’s statewide COVID closure orders – a process known as “pre-deprivation hearings,” or hearings that would take place before the state deprives someone of their property or liberty.
During a time of pandemic, Judge Wood said the state’s “overwhelming interest” in protecting residents of the state from an infectious disease – in this case, COVID-19 – overrides business owners’ rights to otherwise demand the state prove the need to close their business.
To find otherwise, the judge said, would damage the state’s ability to respond to the pandemic.
“…The Governor makes a compelling case that holding individualized pre-deprivation hearings for each affected person and business would overwhelm the administrative system and cripple the state’s ability to act quickly and decisively to contain a rapidly spreading disease,” the judge wrote. “Meanwhile, … the state’s interest in protecting public health and safety is extremely robust.
“Pre-deprivation hearings would almost certainly render the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic ineffective, causing immense harm to thousands of Illinois residents.”
The judge said the state also did not violate equal protection rights, because Pritzker’s orders applied to entire categories of businesses, and not just specific businesses.
Further, she said, the governor is allowed to differentiate between restaurants and other kinds of businesses and gathering places, such as grocery stores, salons and churches, based on public behavior in those businesses. Wood said the governor’s rules are “rational,” as they are based on scientific understanding of how COVID-19 is spread.
“It was rational for the Governor to weigh the benefits of a reduced infection rate against the costs of limiting activities that pose a high risk of transmission in crafting the state’s response to COVID-19,” Judge Wood wrote.
She said the COVID-19 pandemic presents the state with a situation which can allow the governor to violate some constitutional rights and even those spelled out in the state’s own public health laws.
“… The state’s enactment of the (Department of Public Health Act) did not render all other approaches to addressing public-health concerns irrational and certainly did not make them unconstitutional,” Judge Wood wrote.
Orland Park and its co-plaintiffs have been represented in the action by attorneys Lance Malina, J. Allen Wall and Howard Jablecki, of the firm of Klein, Thorpe and Jenkins Ltd., of Chicago.