The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled against lawmakers who voted to cut their own salary, then argued they should get the money anyway, because legislation they approved violated the constitution.
The Sept. 22 opinion brings final resolution to a protracted legal battle that began in June 2017 when Michael Noland, an Elgin Democrat whose 10-year run in the Illinois Senate ended earlier that year, filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court alleging he was deprived of income through mid-term furlough days and legislation that eliminated cost-of-living increases from 2009 through 2016.
Noland, now a Kane County Circuit Court judge, sponsored and voted in support of the bills centering his lawsuit. Cook County Judge Franklin Valderrama initially granted Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza’s motion to dismiss Noland’s complaint for lack of standing, since he was no longer in the General Assembly when he sued.
Former state Senate Majority Leader James Clayborne Jr., D-East St. Louis, then joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff in May 2018. Clayborne, who did not seek re-election in 2018, also voted in favor of the legislation in question.
Valderrama then granted Noland and Clayborne’s request for summary judgment to strike down the contested laws as facially unconstitutional. He ordered Mendoza to pay $71,507 to Noland and $104,413 to Clayborne. The ex-lawmakers also requested cross-relief on behalf of other lawmakers not party to the lawsuit, which Valderrama said was meritless.
However, former House member Mike Fortner, R-West Chicago, filed a class action complaint seeking to represent everyone who served in the General Assembly from 2009 through 2019 — more than 200 people — asking Mendoza to issue back pay to all affected lawmakers, a figure pegged near $10 million. Fortner was a co-sponsor of some of the challenged legislation.
Illinois Supreme Court Justice P. Scott Neville wrote the court’s 6-0 opinion on Mendoza’s appeal; the court's newest member, Justice Lisa Holder White, took no part in the decision, as she was not on the court when justices heard arguments.
On appeal, Mendoza argued the laws apply to the legislative terms following when that legislation took effect and were therefore constitutionally applied. She also said Valderrama improperly denied her affirmative defenses, which included a statutory limitation provision and the legal doctrine known as laches, through which she argued the plaintiffs waited so long to request relief as to make it unfair for a court to grant the request.
The court agreed laches should apply in the case. So, the court shied away from addressing whether the salary reduction law passed constitutional muster, Neville said.
To prove laches is applicable, Neville continued, Mendoza had to show the plaintiffs didn’t exercise due diligence. They also had to show how a ruling in their favor would prejudice her office as a defendant.
Noland and Clayborne argued they were not merely private citizens, but were suing to establish a public right attached to their former offices.
“The flaw in plaintiffs’ argument is that they are suing in their individual capacity and not in an official capacity as former members of the Illinois Senate,” Neville wrote. “A claim by a former public official seeking payment of compensation from public funds is the assertion of a private right to protect a personal entitlement, not a public right on behalf of the people or for the benefit of the people collectively.”
The court further explained several earlier opinions regarding public money have turned on laches as an equitable defense and others establishing that constitutional claims can be time barred. The first salary reduction bill passed almost eight years before Noland’s lawsuit.
“Plaintiffs, who are suing in their individual and not in their official capacity, have slept on their rights, and we will not come to the aid of such complainants,” Neville wrote, adding the opinion effectively overturns the court’s 1941 opinion in Northrup v. City Council of Chicago.
The court also rejected arguments invoking instances in which public officials made campaign pledges or private deals to take less money than was established for their work. Those cases turned on promises deemed illegal and unenforceable, the court said, whereas the salary reduction laws Noland and Clayborne challenged remain valid.
“Plaintiffs, with the power to set their own salaries, introduced, sponsored, endorsed, voted for, publicly touted their sponsorship of and acquiesced to the reduction in their statutory salaries,” Neville wrote. “Indeed, they may have benefitted in their reelection endeavors in part, based on their championing of this position of a decrease in salary for the benefit of the public good of the state of Illinois in a time of monetary need.”
If the court forced Mendoza to issue back pay, Neville explained, she would suffer legal prejudice by being required to transfer money already assigned elsewhere and it would be impossible for her to rectify resulting changes in several already completed fiscal years.
After determining laches bars the claims for back pay, the court said it didn’t need to consider Judge Valderrama’s finding that Mendoza’s other affirmative defenses lacked merit. It vacated Valderrama’s orders finding a prohibition on mid-term legislative salary changes and finding the laws in question unconstitutional.