Faced with the possibility of losing their slim majority on the Illinois Supreme Court next year, Democrats in Springfield have moved to redraw the lines for the state high court’s five districts, carving up the bulk of the state in a new way for the first time since 1963.
On May 25, the Democrat-dominated Illinois State Senate Redistricting Committee released a proposed new map to geographically distribute the state’s Supreme Court justices.
And the new map could carry heavy political consequences for decades to come, as Democrats could improve their odds of holding their current 4-3 majority on the court, or even add yet another seat in a heavily Democratic election season.
The Illinois State Senate Redistricting Committee has released a proposed new map for the Illinois Supreme Court's five districts. Here, the new proposed districts are shown by color shading, while existing district lines are outlined in black.
“It’s possible they (Democrats) could still potentially lose their majority,” said John Pastuovic, president of the Illinois Civil Justice League, a legal reform advocacy organization. “But, based on the data we’ve run on this, I think Las Vegas would set the odds in their favor.”
For decades, Illinois’ counties have been divided up into five Supreme Court districts. From those districts, Illinois voters elect seven state Supreme Court justices.
Three of the justices are elected from Cook County, which is counted as the state’s First District. Cook County has its own First District appellate court, as well.
Voters in the other four districts – with appellate courthouses in suburban Elgin and downstate Ottawa, Springfield and Mt. Vernon – each select one justice from their districts.
Under the prior configuration, the Fifth District, based in Mt. Vernon, included the counties generally south of Springfield. The Fourth District, based in Springfield, included most counties in central Illinois.
The Third District, based in Ottawa, included much of north central Illinois.
Those three districts ran from the Mississippi River east to the state’s borders with Indiana and Kentucky.
The Second District, based in Elgin, covered the counties in northern Illinois, other than Cook, running from Jo Daviess County in the far northwest corner of the state, to Cook County and Lake Michigan.
Under the new proposed districts, however, the counties will be grouped in a new way. Counties in east central Illinois would be merged with southern Illinois in a new Fifth District.
The Fourth District would be extended north to grab Peoria, the Quad Cities, Rockford and the northwest corner.
A new Third District would grab suburban DuPage County, while retaining only Will, Kankakee, Grundy, Iroquois, LaSalle and Bureau counties.
And a new Second District would cover only Lake, McHenry, Kane, DeKalb and Kendall counties in northeast Illinois.
Democrats on the Senate Redistricting Committee said the changes were needed to better balance the population among the five Supreme Court districts.
“Illinois is a very different state than it was 60 years ago, and the voters of Illinois deserve to elect members to our state’s highest court that reflect their values,” said Senate Redistricting Committee Chairman State Sen. Omar Aquino (D-Chicago.)
Pastuovic said the ICJL analysis of the district’s confirms that it places the districts “within the threshold of substantially equal.” He estimated the districts would each have a total average deviation from the mean of 4.425%.
But Pastuovic said the stated rationale for redrawing the districts at this time – to balance population among the districts – is “more than a little convenient.”
Rather, he pointed to recent election results, in which Democrat Thomas Kilbride failed to win retention from voters in the state’s Third District. After the loss, the Supreme Court appointed Democrat Third District Appellate Justice Robert Carter to the seat until the 2022 election.
Carter, of LaSalle County, vowed to retire upon the completion of his appointment to the high court, and not seek election.
However, the current Third District has trended significantly more Republican in recent years. Pastuovic estimated the district splits 55%-45% Republican vs Democrat, based on voter registration data.
Should that Supreme Court seat go to voters in the current Third District, it would likely be rated as an easy Republican win, giving the Republicans a majority on the court for the first time in decades.
Pastuovic estimated the new Third District would be closer to 51%-49% in favor of Republicans.
A shift in favor of the Republicans could produce big changes in how state laws and the state constitution are interpreted.
The Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court in recent years, for instance, has shot down attempts to reform the state’s pension system, and denied voters the chance to vote on a new constitutional amendment stripping power from state lawmakers to gerrymander the state’s legislative districts to their partisan advantage.
The state Supreme Court also has issued directives and orders that have helped Gov. JB Pritzker thwart court challenges to the broad, sweeping emergency powers he has wielded for over a year in the name of slowing the spread of COVID-19, even as other states have declared their governors acted illegally to continue issuing emergency orders over that same span without the approval of their state legislatures.
However, the new map makes any partisan shift much less likely.
The new Second District, for instance, would now be a true tossup district, based on voter party ID, Pastuovic said, split nearly 50-50.
Pastuovic rated the Fourth and Fifth district seats as still solid Republican.
But he said the odds of the Democrats coming out of the coming elections with a 4-3 edge, or even a 5-2 advantage, are greater than the chances of Republicans managing to gain control.
“It is clear to me that the Democrats have initiated this first in 50-year judicial remap in reaction to their third district retention loss in 2020 and concern that they could lose that seat to the Republicans in 2022,” Pastuovic said.
“Calling for a new Supreme Court maps because of a population disparity is a convenient narrative. It is also disingenuous.”