Illinois' powerful Democratic House Speaker has asked the Democrat-dominated Illinois Supreme Court to overturn a Springfield judge's ruling that a law, enacted by Gov. JB Pritzker and his fellow Democrats in the supermajority in the state legislature to change candidate selection rules in the middle of the current election cycle amounts to an unconstitutional effort to block dozens of Republicans from the ballot.
On June 12, attorneys representing Illinois Speaker of the House Emanuel "Chris" Welch filed a petition with the Illinois Supreme Court, as he seeks to beat back a challenge lodged against the hastily approved law by a group of prospective Republican legislative candidates who assert the law has trampled their right to run for office and the rights of many Illinois voters to cast a ballot for anyone other than Democrats.
A notice of appeal filed by Welch and his attorneys - two longtime prominent Democratic Party election lawyers - said the Speaker is asking the court to vacate the order issued by Sangamon County Judge Gail Noll, which blocked Illinois election authorities from enforcing the new law.
No documents yet filed offer insight into the arguments Welch and his legal team will use to challenge Judge Noll's reasoning on appeal.
Welch's lawyers followed up with a petition filed June 13, asking the court to accelerate the appeal proceedings so briefing in the case is completed in about a month. That request was unopposed by plaintiffs, according to court documents.
The case was appealed directly to the Illinois Supreme Court after Noll declared the law, now known as Public Act 103-0586, to be unconstitutional, at least as applied to a group of 14 candidates selected by Republican Party leadership to represent the party on the ballot against a group of Democratic incumbents in the contests for state legislative seats in November.
In that decision, Judge Noll entered an injunction blocking the state from enforcing that law against that group of Republican candidates.
Initially known as Senate Bill 2412, the law amended state election rules to block political parties from slating candidates to run for office after the primary election, unless they had first run in their party's primary election.
Under the previous rules, parties who had no official nominees for a particular elected office after the spring primary vote had 75 days after the primary election to "slate" candidates to run as the official party nominee in such races. This year, that deadline was to be June 3.
However, six weeks after the March 19 primary, and with just about four weeks until the June 3 deadline, Democrats rushed SB2412 through both houses of the Illinois General Assembly in less than 48 hours. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker then quickly signed the legislation, upending the candidate nomination process that was already underway.
While the changes would apply to all political parties, it is particularly harmful to Republicans during the 2024 election, as the GOP intended to rely on that process to ensure it had candidates on the ballot to run against Democratic incumbents in the November general election.
Pritzker described the law as an "ethics reform" measure, and Democrats said the law was needed to ensure only party primary voters can choose party nominees for seats in the Illinois state House and Senate.
Republicans, however, said the law amounted to brazen election interference by a partisan supermajority, trampling Republicans' rights under the guise of promoting democracy.
With the changes, Democrats could all but ensure at least 53 of their incumbents in the State House and State Senate will face no competition this fall.
There are 138 state legislative contests on the ballot this fall across Illinois.
The prospective Republican candidates, who had been slated by the party in their respective state House and Senate districts, filed suit on May 11, about a week after Pritzker signed the measure into law. They are represented in the action by attorneys from the Liberty Justice Center, of Chicago.
The lawsuit asserted Democrats had unconstitutionally changed the rules for the 2024 election in the middle of the election cycle, violating the rights of voters and of candidates to seek office under the state and federal constitutions.
The lawsuit named as defendants the Illinois State Board of Elections and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. Raoul's office has argued the ISBE was improperly included as a defendant.
Welch was not named as a defendant, but was granted permission to intervene as a party to defend the law on behalf of state lawmakers.
Only Welch appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, not Raoul or the ISBE.
However, before Judge Noll in Springfield, Raoul's office and attorneys for Welch both argued the law should be considered constitutional.
Welch's attorneys, Michael J. Kasper and Adam R. Vaught, conceded the law may amount to a political "dirty trick" by Democrats, by changing election rules in the middle of an ongoing election cycle.
But they argued lawmakers have the absolute right to make changes to laws regulating ballot access at just about any time, and courts have no authority to question lawmakers' decisions.
They and Raoul's office argued lawmakers acted within their authority to determine, even in the middle of an election cycle, that rule changes were needed to ensure candidates are solely chosen by voters in primary elections, rather than "a process where political insiders hand-select them to be their party nominees after the primary has passed..."
That reasoning under the law, however, would not apply to recent moves by Democratic Party leaders to select replacements for vacancies in the state House and Senate following the primary election, giving candidates who never faced voters the chance to essentially run as incumbents.
For instance, former State Sen. Ann Gillespie recently accepted appointment by Gov. Pritzker to lead the Illinois Department of Insurance. To replace Gillespie in the 27th Senate District in the northwest suburbs, Democratic Party leaders on May 11 selected former State Rep. Mark L. Walker.
Then Democratic Party leaders selected Arlington Heights Village Trustee Nicolle Grasse to replace Walker in the 53rd Representative District. Grasse, who will now serve out the remainder of Walker's current term in the State House of Representatives, will now also serve as the Democratic Party's nominee for the 53rd House seat.
Under the new law, Grasse would have run unopposed. If Welch prevails at the state Supreme Court, Democrats would be able to block Republican candidate Ron Andermann from the ballot in that race, because he did not run in the primary election.
Andermann is one of the 14 Republican candidates who joined the lawsuit challenging the candidate slating law and is currently covered by Judge Noll's injunction, guaranteeing his spot on the ballot in the 53rd District race this fall, for now.
The Liberty Justice Center has not commented on the appeal.
Raoul's office said it is playing no part in the appeal, even though Kasper and Vaught are identified in court filings as "special assistant attorneys general." Raoul's office said they were appointed by the Attorney General's office for the matter, but work under the supervision of Kendra Elizabeth Piercy, Chief Legal Counsel to the Speaker of the House.
Both Kasper and Vaught are longtime Democratic Party attorneys with ties to indicted former House Speaker and former Illinois Democratic Party Chairman Michael J. Madigan.
Editor's note: This article has been revised to reflect additional information received after publication from the Illinois Attorney General's office concerning the nature of the relationship between the attorneys representing Speaker Welch in the legal matter and the Attorney General's office.