The Illinois Supreme Court will take a slate of arguments over some vexing and controversial legal questions this month, including whether a union member can sue an attorney who was hired by the union to represent him, and if a religious school has carte blanche to fire a principal for reporting to police an incident that embarrassed the school and the church organization with which it was associated.
The court is also scheduled to hear arguments on other cases, including whether the McHenry County clerk can expose those who ran an anonymous political campaign against him; whether a city can use a “points” system to allegedly sidestep a law forbidding the use of quota systems to encourage police to issue tickets; and whether Illinois law requires community colleges to rehire or reappoint laid-off faculty before hiring adjunct instructors.
After hearing arguments remotely this spring, the state high court will resume presiding over cases in person in September. In a recently issued release, Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Anne M. Burke said she and the other justices on the court believed the court’s “implementation of extensive safety precautions” meant the justices were safe to return to open court this fall.
Those health and safety measures will include time-specific entrances for visitors, temperature checks, floor markings indicating six-foot distances, limiting the number of individuals in each room and regular cleaning of surfaces.
The justices will also be separated on the benches by tempered glass dividers, and face masks will be required when moving about the building. Attorneys will be allowed to remove their masks when they are “socially distanced” or when delivering oral argument at the podium in the courtroom, the release said.
The justices are set to hear 17 cases in the new term, beginning Tuesday, Sept. 15, and ending Wednesday, Sept. 23. All arguments will begin at 9 a.m. Video of the arguments will be available on BlueRoomStream.com, the release said.
Among the cases:
● The justices will consider whether Illinois law allows a union member to bring a malpractice lawsuit against a lawyer provided for them by their union.
Zander accused the lawyer, Roy Carlson, of advising him to waive his right to a hearing before a police board, costing him his case.
The appeals justices on the Illinois First District Appellate Court ruled the attorney, Roy Carlson, was immune from the lawsuit because he had been hired by the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police. They said the case belongs before the Illinois Labor Relations Board, not in court.
Zander, however, argued Carlson represented him, not the union, regardless of who was paying Carlson’s legal fees.
● The court will hear arguments over whether the Diocese of Joliet was within its rights to fire Mary Rehfield, the former principal at a Catholic school in Naperville.
Rehfield, 66, sued the Joliet Diocese in 2017. According to court documents and published reports, Rehfield had reported to police a threatening voicemail left for a priest who oversees the school by a man who was allegedly concerned over bullying he claimed his child had experienced at the school.
According to published reports, parents later called for Rehfield’s termination because they believed she knew of prior threatening behavior from the man, yet did nothing about it. Rehfield said she was scapegoated for decisions made by the Diocese itself in how to deal with the situation. She said she was allowed to take the fall for a situation that embarrassed the school and the Diocese, after it became public in police reports.
Rehfield said the Diocese wrongfully fired her.
However, an appeals court said the Diocese, as a religious organization, has the right to fire her for whatever reason it wishes, as the Diocese is protected from government review of most of its hiring and firing decisions by the First Amendment.
Rehfield has asked the state Supreme Court to rule that so-called “ministerial exception” doesn’t apply in this case, because she was fired for allegedly being a whistleblower, reporting criminal conduct to the police.
● The justices will consider whether McHenry County Clerk and Recorder Joseph Tirio should be able to use a defamation lawsuit to reveal the identities of people who led an otherwise anonymous political campaign against him.
Flyers distributed by the campaign accused Tirio of operating a secret “slush fund,” which he allegedly used to pay for a vacation to New Mexico, allegedly under the guise of a work seminar in February 2017.
The defendants in Tirio’s action argue they should be protected by the First Amendment’s free speech guarantees.
Courts to this point have sided with Tirio.
● Justices will hear arguments on whether the city of Sparta, in southwestern Illinois, has the legal ability to use a so-called “points system” to evaluate its police officers, even though a police union says the system essentially establishes a quota system that rewards police officers for writing tickets and citations.
The city established a system that evaluates officers, in part, on the number of contacts it has with people within the community. The system then awards points based on the kinds of contacts.
The Policemen’s Benevolent Labor Committee said the system, in effect, prioritizes contacts that send officers to court, such as traffic tickets or other citations. This, they said, violates Illinois law forbidding so-called citation quota systems for police officers.
An appeals court sided with the police union on the question.
● Justices will also hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by tenured faculty members who accuse the community college that laid them off, of violating state law by hiring adjunct instructors for open teaching assignments.
The tenured instructors said John Logan Community College, outside Carbondale in far southern Illinois, should have been required to first reoffer the teaching assignments to laid off tenured faculty, like themselves.
An appeals court sided with the instructors.