Democrats have not yet responded in court to a Republican lawsuit challenging the legislative district map that has handed Democrats a supermajority in Springfield.
However, the state's Republicans already have been forced to defend their action in court against an apparent move by the Democrat-dominated Illinois Supreme Court to potentially pull the plug on the legal challenge without actually ruling on whether Democrats violated Illinoisans' constitutional rights by gerrymandering a map designed to ensure Democrats can hold their supermajority, regardless of how the state's voters actually vote.
On Jan. 29, Republican voters from Cook County, St. Clair County, DeKalb County and elsewhere in Illinois joined with Republican House Minority Leader Tony McCombie to directly petition the state high court to toss out and replace the state's most recent legislative district map.
Illinois State Rep. and Minority Leader Tony McCombie
| Tony McCombie State Representative District 89
The map has been in place for both the 2022 and 2024 elections. It was approved by the Democratic legislative supermajority in the General Assembly and Gov. JB Pritzker in 2021.
In their lawsuit, McCombie and her fellow plaintiffs called the map "the byproduct of extreme partisan gerrymandering."
"They are drawn by the political party in control and are intended to entrench the Democratic Party in power," the Republicans said. "The districts are also meant to prevent voters affiliated with the minority party from electing candidates of their choice. In other words, the general election outcomes are rigged."
The lawsuit asserts the 2021 map violates constitutional principles intended to ensure voters' rights are protected and their voices appropriately represented in the state capitol.
The lawsuit marks the latest attempt by Republicans to break the Democratic hammerlock on the redistricting process.
In 2016, the Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court cut short an attempt to allow voters to vote on amending the state constitution to hand power to redraw those districts over to an independent mapmaking commission, as is done in other states. The state high court ruled at the time that the attempt to amend the constitution was itself unconstitutional.
Four years ago, federal judges rejected legal challenges to the 2021 maps. In those rulings, judges agreed that Democrats had clearly drawn maps "motivated principally by partisan political considerations" - namely, the goal of increasing Democratic Party power in Illinois.
In their lawsuit, Republicans have noted that the results of the two elections since that ruling have demonstrated just how successful Democrats were in using the maps to entrench their political power.
They noted that in 2022, Republican candidates collectively "won a majority - 50.9% - of the statewide votes.
And in 2024, Republicans claimed 45% of the statewide vote, amid the election of President Donald Trump.
Yet in both elections, Democrats won and held a supermajority in the Illinois state House and Senate.
They assert Democrats accomplished this goal by carving up the map of Illinois and its communities into Tetris-like jigsaw cut shapes, which pay no heed to community, city or county boundaries, but merely are intended to ensure Democrats are the majority in as many districts as possible.
The complaint asserts such mapmaking violates the Illinois state constitution's mandates that legislative districts must be both "contiguous" and "compact."
They further argue the maps violate past Illinois Supreme Court rulings, in which the state high court tossed out past district maps featuring district designs which, they argue, are more constitutional than at least 52 Illinois House Districts drawn by Democrats in their current legislative map.
Republicans argue an academic analysis of state election results show that, if maps were drawn to comply with the state constitution's mandates, Republicans would hold at least 11 more seats than they do now, giving them 43% of the seats and breaking the Democrats' supermajority.
The complaint further asserts the current map violates Illinoisans' rights to "free and equal" elections. They assert other states with similar clauses in their state constitutions, including Pennsylvania, have interpreted that language to mean voters must "have an equal opportunity to translate their votes into representation" - rights which can be violated by so-called "gerrymandering for unfair partisan political advantage."
In Pennsylvania, Democrats used that reasoning to invalidate a Republican drawn legislative district map.
In Illinois, Republicans said that reasoning must now be applied to the Democrats' map.
Democrats have yet to file a response to the lawsuit before the Illinois Supreme Court.
However, in mid-February, the Illinois Supreme Court acted on its own to issue an order directing both the Republican plaintiffs and the Illinois State Board of Elections - whose members are appointed by Gov. Pritzker - to submit briefs discussing the question of whether the Republican petition "is timely."
The order did not provide any further questions or guidance concerning the question.
The order required the Republican plaintiffs to file their brief by Feb. 28.
The state would be given until March 14 to respond, and Republicans would then be given until March 21 to respond to the state's response.
Their brief focuses on the so-called "statute of limitations," or legal provisions which could limit the timeframe in which such legal actions could be filed.
In their brief, they assert any such temporal limitations do not apply to their lawsuit, because it was filed by McCombie, a governmental official acting in her official capacity "to vindicate a public right."
Further, they said the lawsuit centers on a "continuing violation" of Illinoisans' constitutional rights. Each election held under the 2021 Democrat-drawn maps essentially causes new violations and new legal injuries to Illinois voters who wish to have voices and views other than Democrats' represented in Springfield.
And they note the constitutional language governing legal challenges like theirs includes no mention of any time limits.
However, even if the state's so-called "catch-all" five-year statute of limitations can apply to the case, Republicans said the lawsuit still survives.
They note the lawsuit was filed in 2025 - four years after Democrats approved the map.
And they said the lawsuit intentionally was filed after two elections, abiding by the U.S. Supreme Court's guidance disfavoring legislative map challenges that come after only one election.
"Put simply, Plaintiffs waited to see if there was a trend (and there was)," Republicans wrote in their brief.
"... The timing of this Motion (lawsuit) is actually optimal. It allowed for multiple years' worth of election data... It beat the five-year statute of limitations (to the extent it applies). And it was filed early enough to be decided well before putative candidates must circulate petitions later this year for the 2026 election cycle," the Republicans wrote.
Neither the state Supreme Court nor any Democratic Illinois officials have yet responded to the filings.
The Republican plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Charles E. Harris II, Mitchell D. Holzrichter, Heather A. Weiner, Joseph D. Blackhurst and Preston R. Michelson, of the firm of Mayer Brown LLP, of Chicago; and attorney John G. Fogarty Jr., of Chicago.