A federal judge has moved to quickly pull the plug on a judicial reform advocate's lawsuit accusing Illinois' largest judicial lobbying group of using the collective power of judges to exercise "complete domination" over the Illinois court system and protect their member judges from criticism and consequences for unethical actions.
The IJA filed a motion to dismiss on June 25.
Three days later, before Weinhaus could file a response, U.S. District Judge Robert Blakey dismissed the case.
The judge agreed with the IJA that Weinhaus' case doesn't belong in federal court, because the judge said he believed Weinhaus was asking him to overturn the decisions of state courts, which is prohibited under guiding legal doctrines.
The judge gave Weinhaus until July 22 to amend his lawsuit to correct the deficiencies identified by the judge.
The Illinois Judges Association initially represented rank-and-file circuit court judges in Illinois county courts, to advocate for greater judicial pay and other interests of state court judges. Now, the IJA is heavily populated and led by more powerful judges, including justices of the Illinois Supreme Court and state appellate courts, who set court rules and govern who may serve as an attorney in Illinois.
In his lawsuit, Weinhaus asserted the IJA has now become a "Business League" and effectively an "arm of the state" whose members mobilize to protect themselves, at the expense of "the individual's right to due process in front of a fair and impartial judiciary."
Weinhaus' legal claims center on actions taken by Illinois appellate justices to allegedly protect Cook County Judge and IJA Board of Directors member Regina Scannicchio for alleged improper actions she took against Weinhaus amid Weinhaus' contentious divorce proceedings with his then-wife.
Scannicchio is also named as a defendant in Weinhaus' action.
Weinhaus asserts Scannicchio improperly sanctioned him in 2020, a ruling that triggered appeals from Weinhaus in which he accused Scannicchio of "ethical lapses." The complaint does not offer specifics about those alleged "ethical lapses."
Weinhaus' appeal, however, was dismissed by a three-justice panel of the Illinois First District Appellate Court, which included justices Michael B. Hyman, Carl A. Walker and Mary Ellen Coghlan.
Weinhaus asserted the denial of the appeal was improper under Illinois Supreme Court rules, and was motivated by a desire to "circle the wagons" to protect Scannicchio, one of "their own," from public scrutiny over her alleged "lapses."
Weinhaus asserted the appellate justices should have recused themselves, or at least disclose their professional relationship to Scannicchio.
Scannicchio has reportedly filed an ethics complaint of her own against Weinhaus with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission (ARDC), which investigates complaints of misconduct against lawyers in Illinois and can recommend to the Illinois Supreme Court to take actions against them.
While the complaint is not public, Weinhaus has called Scannicchio's complaint politically motivated and baseless.
Weinhaus said he hoped other Illinois judges would follow Alonso's example and "do the same thing before ruling on each other's cases."
Following Alonso's recusal, the case was assigned to Judge Blakey.
The IJA then filed its motion to dismiss.
In the filing, the IJA asserted Weinhaus' lawsuit has no place in federal court, as it essentially petitions a federal court to overturn the actions of state court judges, which is barred under the so-called Rooker-Feldman doctrine, federal legal precedent which prohibits federal courts from reviewing state court judgments.
The IJA called the lawsuit "a rambling diatribe against the Illinois judicial system, Judge Scannicchio, Illinois judges, Illinois appellate justices and the Illinois Judges Association, that fails to even contain threadbare recitals of the elements of a cause of action..."
They assert Weinhaus states no actionable claim against the IJA under the law.
They further assert that the lawsuit against the association is barred by the U.S. Constitution's Eleventh Amendment, which shields "the state and 'arms of the state' from being sued in federal court." The IJA said it is not a state agency, but its members are state officials and state employees. So "to the extent (Weinhaus) is attempting to sue the Defendant, Illinois Judges Association, based upon any actions taken by its judicial members in their official capacities (if any) that could imputed (sic) (to the IJA), such claims are barred by the 11th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution," the IJA wrote.
Weinhaus has yet to file a formal response in court.
However, Blakey said he agreed the Rooker-Feldman doctrine prevented him from allowing the case to move forward in federal court.
"... Plaintiff alleges that 'nothing in this action requests or demands the undoing of any state court action. Instead, it seeks damages caused by non−judicial actions and prevention of future rights−depriving behavior by the Defendants. Most importantly, it seeks preventing members of the Illinois Judges Association from conspiring against the public and to transform it into a 'Good' Business League of Judges if that's possible.
'But Plaintiff's substantive allegations undermine his representations: he alleges in count I that the state court trial and appellate judges lacked impartiality in their handling of litigation involving Plaintiff, and any assessment of that claim necessarily implicates the validity of the state courts' determinations. To the extent Plaintiff claims to be seeking prospective relief for future litigants, he lacks standing to do so," Blakey wrote.
In comments to The Cook County Record following the IJA's motion, Weinhaus noted the Eleventh Amendment arguments essentially prove his point that the IJA and its members improperly behave as if the association is an unofficial "arm of the state."
Following the dismissal, Weinhaus said he disagreed with the decision.
"I don't agree that Rooker-Feldman protects a group of people bribing the judiciary not to hear a case. That's judicial immunity on steroids if the bribers are a Business League of judges."
He noted he was not accusing or suggesting any wrongdoing against judges Alonso or Blakey.
"Apparently, we touched a nerve. The IJA is on notice to clean up their act," Weinhaus said.
According to online bios, Weinhaus is a judicial reform advocate, having served on the board of the Legal Accountability Project, an organization which seeks to hold judges accountable for poor treatment of their law clerks. Weinhaus recently resigned his seat on the LAP board, which he said was "to focus his judicial reform efforts" on another organization he founded and leads, Children of the Court, which says it seeks to ensure judges overseeing child custody disputes have children themselves.
Weinhaus is represented in his action against the IJA by attorney Antonio Valiente, of San Juan, Puerto Rico. While the judge asserted Valiente was not properly registered as a member of the bar for Illinois' Northern District federal court, online records show Valiente - who is listed as Antonio Valiente-Rivera - is an active member of the general bar.
Weinhaus said: "I would hope that the court would amend its minute order not to disparage attorneys as brave as he (Valiente) is for standing for judicial independence."
The IJA is represented by attorneys Joseph Pierotti and Michael J. Progar, of the Progar Law Group, of Chicago.
Editor's note: This article has been revised from the initial version to reflect the decision by Judge Blakey to dismiss the lawsuit and to include reaction to the ruling from plaintiff Edward Weinhaus.