The Illinois Supreme Court has taken to task a state appeals court it said moved too quickly to declare unconstitutional a court rule that a land owner said state environmental officials were using to sidestep her Fourth Amendment rights protecting her against warrantless searches.
The high court said the appeals court had improperly viewed what the high court said may have been a simple appeal of an abuse of discretion through a constitutional lens.
“The only issue that was properly before the appellate court was whether the circuit court’s discovery order constituted an abuse of discretion,” Justice P. Scott Neville Jr. wrote in the nearly unanimous opinion. “Yet, the appellate court did not resolve that question and, instead, held that Fourth Amendment principles must be applied to its review of the discovery order.”
Elizabeth Reents had appealed a circuit court’s discovery order requiring her to permit the Illinois Attorney General’s office, accompanied by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, to inspect a property she owns in Winnebago County near Rockford. The EPA said the site was being used as an illegal dump. Reents, while acknowledging the site had once been a landfill, maintained that it had not been since she acquired it.
The attorney general's office, then under former Attorney General Lisa Madigan, filed suit, initiating pretrial discovery under the court rule known as Illinois Supreme Court Rule 214(a), which generally allows parties in a civil case to inspect real estate if the nature, contents or condition of the property is relevant to the action.
“The Attorney General reasoned that Rule 214(a)’s plain language applies to all parties in civil litigation, without excepting a government litigant,” Neville wrote. “The circuit court reasoned that Rule 214 applies to all civil cases and permits any party to request access to real estate for inspection when it is relevant to the subject matter of the litigation. …The court further explained that, because this was a civil case and not a criminal case, the Fourth Amendment posed no impediment to the Attorney General’s right to inspect the site.”
Reents refused to allow the inspection, saying the attorney general and IEPA needed a warrant.
A Winnebago County judge held Reents in contempt for her refusal to comply with the court’s discovery order. She appealed, claiming it was unconstitutional for the state to inspect her property without a warrant.
The Illinois Second District Appellate Court vacated the discovery order in 2018. The appeals court said, while Rule 214(a) applies to all civil litigants, the proceeding against Reents was actually “quasi-criminal” because Reents faced potentially substantial civil and criminal penalties for allegedly violating the Environmental Protection Act.
Reents’ interest in the property is protected from the government’s request to access it by the Fourth Amendment, the appellate court said.
The attorney general appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.
In its opinion, the Supreme Court found it necessary to clarify what questions were and were not at issue. Not at issue, it said, were any questions of constitutionality, whether pertaining to the Environmental Protection Act or to Rule 214(a).
“As this court has explained on numerous occasions, cases should be decided on nonconstitutional grounds whenever possible, and constitutional issues should be reached only as a last resort,” Justice Neville wrote.
The only question in this case, Neville wrote, was whether the circuit court abused its discretion in issuing a discovery order compelling Reents to permit an inspection.
“The appellate court acknowledged that such orders are reviewed for abuse of discretion but did not address that question,” he wrote. “Rather, the appellate court ignored our established rule … and proceeded directly to an analysis of whether the discovery order violated Reents’ constitutional rights.”
In finding Rule 214(a) was unconstitutional, the appellate court decided a question that had not even been asked, the Supreme Court said. Reents had not challenged the constitutionality of the rule the circuit court relied upon when issuing its order, Neville said.
The court sent the case back to the appellate court, which is instructed to review the circuit court’s order only under the abuse of discretion standard.
Justice Michael J. Burke took no part in the court’s decision.
Reents has been represented by attorney Mark Rouleau, of Rockford.