This fall, a political committee is poised to spend potentially millions of dollars to try to ensure the Democratic Party maintains its hold on the Illinois Supreme Court.
And many of the state’s most prominent personal injury and class action law firms have joined a growing list of left-wing special interest groups, located in Illinois and outside the state, who are pouring money into the fund to back two openly progressive Democratic Supreme Court candidates running in swing districts based in Chicago’s suburbs.
The All For Justice independent expenditure committee was established on Aug. 15, according to records posted by the Illinois State Board of Elections.
Since the committee was created, it has raked in money from Casson’s colleagues on the plaintiffs’ bar, donations that are expected to be spent to help boost the campaigns of two Democrats running for Illinois state Supreme Court, by targeting their Republican opponents, namely Republican Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran in the state’s Second Judicial District and current Republican Supreme Court Justice Michael Burke, in the Third Judicial District.
The committee is led by personal injury lawyer Luke Casson. The address listed for the committee is the same as the address for Casson’s law firm, Andreou & Casson, in the 600 block of West Lake Street in Chicago’s West Loop.
According to biographical information posted online, Casson resides in Oak Park, where he has been active in the local Democratic Party for years. He also serves as an elected member of the board of trustees for Triton College.
According to campaign contribution records, in the 6 weeks since its inception, the All for Justice fund has amassed nearly $3 million in donations.
Almost one-third of that total has come from Illinois trial lawyers, who have chipped in more than $878,000 combined.
Donors listed include the firms of:
- Salvi Schostok & Pritchard, of Chicago, which contributed $136,750;
- Corboy & Demetrio, of Chicago, $76,000;
- Levin & Perconti, of Chicago, $76,000;
- Cavanagh Law Group, of Chicago, $76,000;
- Taxman Pollock Murray & Bekkerman, $76,000; and
- Hurley McKenna & Mertz, of Chicago, $62,666.
From downstate, All for Justice also logged a $151,000 donation from the firm of Keefe Keefe & Unsell, of Belleville.
Those trial lawyer donations have come on top of even bigger contributions from prominent left-wing special interest groups and campaign committees.
These include:
- $500,000 from a campaign connected to Illinois State Sen. President Don Harmon;
- $450,000 from a political action committee associated with the Service Employees International Union, which represents many state government workers;
- $225,000 from a committee with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which also represents many state government workers; and
- $100,000 from a committee with the Illinois Education Association teachers union.
The big donation from Abrams’ group comes despite Democrats’ protests that Republicans were intending to use big money donations from outside the state to fund state Supreme Court candidates in 2022. Democratic lawmakers cited those concerns in passing a law barring people from outside Illinois from donating directly to judicial campaigns and candidates in Illinois.
The law, however, exempted independent expenditure committees, like All for Justice, from the ban.
Trial lawyers in Illinois have historically ranked, with labor unions and the abortion lobby, as among the biggest and most loyal donors and supporters of the Illinois Democratic Party and its causes.
In Illinois this fall, voters will have an opportunity to reshape the state Supreme Court for the first time in modern history.
In the Second Judicial District, which includes Lake, McHenry, Kane, Kendall and DeKalb counties, mostly in Chicago’s north and northwest suburbs, Republican Curran is running against Democrat Lake County Judge Elizabeth Rochford.
And in the Third Judicial District, which includes the counties of DuPage, Will, Kankakee, Grundy, Iroquois, LaSalle and Bureau, Justice Burke is opposed by Grundy County Judge and former Democratic State Rep. Mary K. O’Brien.
The races are expected to be close, as the newly created districts have favored Democrats slightly in recent elections. However, polls nationally have indicated Republicans could perform well in the presidential midterm elections.
And the stakes will be high, as Democrats seek to block Republicans from flipping the majority on the court.
Illinois voters elect seven justices to the court. Three justices coming from the state’s First Judicial District, which includes only heavily Democratic Cook County. Each of the state’s remaining four districts select one justice each.
Democrats said the boundary changes were needed to better balance the population among the five Supreme Court districts, after decades of population shifts within the state.
Outside of the state capitol, however, observers noted the changes came only after Illinois Republicans succeeded in ousting former Supreme Court Justice Thomas Kilbride in 2020, who had served for decades from the state’s former Third Judicial District in north central Illinois. Kilbride was regarded by critics as an ally of now-indicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.
Under the old district lines, an election for an open Supreme Court seat in the Third District may have been an easy Republican win, given the former district’s growing Republican voter rolls.
A shift in favor of the Republicans on the court could produce big changes in how state laws and the state constitution are interpreted.
The Democratic majority on the sate 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 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 declared their governors acted illegally to continue issuing emergency orders over that same span without the approval of their state legislatures.
In the campaign thus far, the Democrats have run largely on one issue: abortion rights.
While themselves running openly as champions of the pro-abortion cause, the Democratic campaigns have claimed it is their Republican opponents who will allow their personal political beliefs on the subject to cloud their judicial judgment. They have further insinuated that allowing Republicans would somehow allow the Supreme Court to restrict abortion rights in a state in which the legislature is dominated by Democrats and in which any remaining restrictions on abortion have been all but swept away in recent years.
In response to the flood of money into the Supreme Court races, Linda Prestia, a spokesperson for Mark Curran, noted the heavy emphasis to date on just the issue of abortion. Prestia said the Democratic candidates don’t want to talk about “all the other problems facing the state,” including a perceived breakdown in public safety, mounting pension costs and public corruption, particularly among those associated with indicted former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, which she called “The Madigan Machine.”
Prestia noted Rochford has also received a $500,000 donation directly from the campaign of Gov. JB Pritzker, which Prestia said indicates Pritzker would consider Rochford to be “yet another judge in his pocket.”
And Prestia noted Rochford chose to donate to the campaign fund of once powerful Democratic kingmaker Chicago Alderman Ed Burke, even after Burke was indicted by federal prosecutors on public corruption charges.
“Unlike Elizabeth Rochford, Mark Curran has decades of experience as a prosecutor and sheriff who fights corruption, takes on party bosses, and promotes public safety,” Prestia said in a prepared statement. “Rochford will just be another rubber stamp for the Madigan Machine, which is why her special interest allies are spending big bucks to run a smear campaign against Mark Curran.”