Downstate attorney Tom Devore, who has spent much of the past 18 months suing Gov. JB Pritzker over his COVID pandemic executive orders, has now sued the governor personally, asserting Pritzker wrongly smeared his name in comments to the press related to those other lawsuits.
The accusations stem from a press conference Pritzker conducted on Oct. 21, specifically addressing a class action lawsuit Devore had filed on behalf of hundreds of parents and school students throughout Illinois over Pritzker’s school mask mandate orders.
During that press conference, Pritzker referred to Devore as a “grifter” who was “taking money from parents who are being taken advantage of.”
Pritzker further accused Devore of conducting a “reign of grifting and terror.”
Since May 2020, Devore has been among those at the fore of the efforts to try to persuade the courts to staunch Pritzker’s use of emergency powers, which he has used to govern large swaths of Illinois’ economy and society using executive orders issued in the name of fighting COVID-19.
Through those months, the lawsuits have particularly taken aim at Pritzker’s orders shutting down many businesses and societal activities and gatherings in 2020. In more recent months, Devore has represented clients seeking to challenge Pritzker’s use of emergency powers to mandate students wear masks in school, and orders mandating certain workers receive COVID vaccines or risk losing their jobs.
To date, most of those lawsuits have failed to persuade courts, who have sided overwhelmingly to the governor’s claims to broad, sweeping powers, so long as he continues to proclaim Illinois a “disaster” caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, in recent days, some of Devore’s legal actions have gained traction. This fall, Devore secured court orders preventing barring some local public schools from enforcing Pritzker’s mask mandates. And he secured a court order under the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act, barring a hospital from firing nurses who objected to being forced to receive COVID vaccines, citing conscientious or religious objections.
In response, Pritzker and his allies at the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and in the Illinois General Assembly have moved to change the Right of Conscience law, to specifically bar such religious objections – while saying they are merely “declaring” the law was never meant to allow such vaccine objections. They also have asked the Illinois Supreme Court to consolidate all lawsuits over Pritzker’s mask mandates in Cook County, a court system dominated by judges who, like Pritzker, are Democrats.
The consolidation petition came in October, in the wake of Devore’s move to file a massive statewide class action on behalf of parents and students against Pritzker’s mask mandate, in downstate Macoupin County, which borders Sangamon County.
Following that filing, Pritzker was asked specifically about Devore’s litigation. It was in that answer that the governor described Devore as a “grifter” who was conducting a “reign of grifting and terror.”
Devore responded by suing Pritzker for defamation.
In the lawsuit, Devore cites the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of “grift,” as a verb meaning “To obtain (money or property) illicitly.”
Devore says Pritzker’s use of that term to describe Devore amounts to a smear of Devore’s integrity, his reputation, and his professional abilities as a lawyer.
“Plaintiff is not a grifter nor is he engaged in any behavior that would lead any reasonable person to believe he was illicitly taking money from clients,” Devore wrote in his complaint. “Nor would any reasonable person believe he was acting in any manner which could be construed as a reign of ‘terror’ by simply complying with his lawyerly duties and filing a lawsuit on his clients’ behalf.”
Devore is seeking a court order requiring Pritzker to pay him at least $50,000 over the allegedly defamatory accusations.
Devore is represented in the action by attorney Brian Polinske, of Edwardsville.