CHICAGO — A federal appeals panel has signaled that four decades of federal oversight of allegedly corrupt hiring practices at the Cook County Clerk’s Office may need to end.
In April 2020, U.S. Magistrate Judge Sidney Schenkier largely ruled against County Clerk Karen Yarbrough in a lawsuit alleging her tenure, starting with her election in 2018, has involved strategies to hire friends and political allies, while instituting policies intended to hound out others, including long-time clerk’s office employees. He also stressed the importance of federal scrutiny, as the clerk's office absorbs the Cook County Recorder’s Office, saying complaints over patronage hiring followed Yarbrough from her years leading the Recorder's office, as well.
Chicago lawyer and noted political reform advocate Michael Shakman, along with political organization the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization, first filed suit against Yarbrough in September 2019. Shakman has used federal courts to press for political hiring reform within governmental offices in Cook County and throughout Illinois, mostly run by Democrats, since 1969. In the decades since, Shakman’s continued actions have secured a series of court orders, known as the Shakman Decrees, which bar a host of Illinois government agencies from letting politics improperly control who is hired for most government jobs. The decrees give the federal courts oversight of hiring practices in Cook County and Springfield.
U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Michael Y. Scudder
Yarbrough challenged Schenkier’s ruling before the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which issued its decision April 16. Judge Michael Scudder wrote the opinion; Judges Frank Easterbrook and Michael Kanne concurred.
“This matter has languished in the federal courts for a long time — indeed, as best we can tell, for decades with little to no meaningful activity,” Scudder wrote. “Diligence, not dormancy, must mark the path forward.”
The panel said Shakman’s 2019 lawsuit was the first attempt to get a judge to appoint a special master to monitor compliance. In response, Yarbrough sought vacation of consent decrees from 1972 and 1991. But Schenkier determined Yarbrough’s practice of rotating employees between offices was “instituted for the purpose of making life miserable” for veteran supervisors who didn’t have political connections.
Review of the appointment of a special master doesn’t fall under the panel’s jurisdiction, Scudder wrote, but it was able to consider Schenkier’s denial of the motion to vacate the decrees. In analyzing the 1991 decree, the panel noted IVI-IPO member George Tserotas works in the clerk’s office and is subject to job rotation because “he refuses to engage in political patronage,” Scudder wrote. The panel said that and other “ongoing violations reflect the precise political patronage the consent decrees seek to end.”
Among those violations are Yarbrough’s decision, without required approval from Schenkier, to change a list of which jobs she could fill without judicial oversight. Another was hiring for certain jobs without giving public notice of the openings.
“This conduct allowed the Clerk to hire employees behind the scenes, away from the public accountability and oversight contemplated by the 1991 Decree,” Scudder wrote. “We see no error in the magistrate’s finding that the Clerk ‘without question’ violated this ‘unequivocal mandate.’ ”
Although the panel agreed with Schenkier’s opinion Yarbrough isn’t complying with oversight rules, “we trust — and expect — that the violations identified by the magistrate will be remedied with appropriate speed, and that, moving forward, all parties will work together to ensure swift compliance. It is time to get these cases off the federal docket, and all indications are that the newly assigned district judge shares the same objective.”
The panel dismissed the appeal of the special master appointment and otherwise affirmed Schenkier’s opinion.
Cardelle Spangler, of the firm of Winston & Strawn, of Chicago, is the special master overseeing the clerk’s office, through Aug. 31. She is scheduled to file a report by June 30.
Yarbrough is represented by the firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson, of Chicago.
Shakman and the other plaintiffs are represented by the Chicago firm of Locke Lord, and by Shakman's firm of Miller, Shakman, Levine & Feldman.