Once again noting the action has been characterized as a "dirty trick," lawyers for Illinois' powerful Democratic House Speaker urged the Illinois Supreme Court to allow a new state law to take effect and block potentially dozens of Republican candidates from the ballot, in part, because the Speaker asserts lawmakers have sweeping and nearly unchallengeable powers to change ballot access rules whenever and however they like.
On June 25, lawyers for House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch filed their opening brief to the state high court in the controversy over the law, backed by Welch, which abruptly and hastily stripped the state's political party leaders from selecting candidates to run in state legislative races.
The filing comes about two weeks since Welch, through his lawyers attorneys Michael J. Kasper and Adam R. Vaught - longtime Democratic election lawyers with deep ties to party leadership, including indicted former House Speaker Michael J. Madigan - first petitioned the Illinois Supreme Court to overturn the ruling of a Springfield judge.
House Speaker Emanuel "Chris" Welch (D-Hillside)
| emanuelchriswelch.com
The case was appealed directly to the Illinois Supreme Court after Sangamon County Circuit Judge Gail 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.
Welch was not named as a defendant in the action, but successfully secured permission to intervene in the case to allow him and his legal team to defend the law.
In their brief, Welch's lawyers largely centered their arguments on appeal on the principle that the courts have no business hearing the challenge at all, at this point. They assert the prospective Republican candidates should have first been required to attempt to file their nominating petitions, and then wait while the Illinois State Board of Elections or other local elections boards ultimately cite the new state law to reject their petitions, presuming their nominations were not disqualified for other more traditional reasons.
Kasper and Vaught argued state law and legal precedent does not allow courts to jump the gun and weigh in on such nomination "objections" before the elections boards issue a decision.
In her ruling, however, Noll said the case was not merely about candidates kicked off the ballot through the traditional objection process. Rather, she said the case centered on actions taken by the state's Democratic legislative supermajority to prevent candidates from seeking office and to deny voters a realistic choice in November's elections.
She said the action violated those constitutional rights.
Welch, through Kasper and Vaught, rejected that characterization. They argued the law doesn't stop anyone from voting or seek to throw out the results of an election by, for instance, removing a candidate from the ballot who had won a primary election.
Rather, they said, the law only affects the rights of the Republican candidates to place their name on the ballot under the rules that had been in place until Democrats abruptly rewrote the rules in the middle of the slating and candidate selection process.
And from that perspective, they said, the law is not unconstititional, because the right to run for office is not considered "fundamental" and lawmakers are empowered to set the rules for who can seek office and what they must do to place their name on the ballot.
The anti-slating law, they said, "cannot be said to be a severe restriction on ballot access. It applies equally to vacancies in nomination for seats in the General Election for both the Democratic and Republican parties. And each plaintiff could have, but chose not to, run in the primary election.
"... The Act imposes a reasonable restriction on ballot access. Any candidate seeking to carry an established party’s banner in the general election must first prevail in the party’s primary election and run the risk that their party’s voters may choose someone else," Welch and his lawyers wrote.
They asserted the new law, while frustrating the ability of Republican or Democratic Party leaders to "slate" candidates after the primary, in effect can increase the choices of voters, by giving voters "dissatisified with the results of the primary election" more time to secure the thousands of signatures they need to place an independent candidate on the ballot.
"While plaintiffs may decry the Act as some sort of political dirty trick, that does not make the Act unconstitutional," Welch and his lawyers wrote.
Quoting a decision from the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, they asserted "the price of political dirty tricks must be collected at the ballot box rather than the courthouse."
The Speaker's brief noted that the law this year would have a disproportionate effect on Republican candidates and voters seeking an alternative to Democratic candidates. The brief, however, did not address the large number of Democratic candidates who could run unopposed this fall if the Illinois Supreme Court sides with Welch and upholds the law.
Attorneys for the Republican challengers will have until July 8 to file a response.