Illinois' ruling Democrats can continue to enforce a state law making it more difficult for Illinois residents to challenge the constitutionality of state laws in court, after the Illinois Supreme Court turned away a challenge and left in place the law forcing people to file such constitutional challenges in state courts in either Chicago or Springfield.
In the 6-1 ruling, the Illinois Supreme Court declared the plaintiffs in the action - the owners of a gun shop in downstate Madison County, near St. Louis - couldn't show the requirement that they press their claim in Sangamon County court in Springfield, rather than in Madison County, was enough of an "inconvenience" to violate their rights.
So, the court's majority said a Madison County judge was wrong to strike down the venue-limiting law as unconstitutional on that basis.
Illinois Supreme Court Justice David Overstreet
| Illinoiscourts.gov
In the ruling, however, the court's majority shied away from a more sweeping declaration concerning the law's constitutionality.
And the high court also refused to rule on a request from Illinois' politically powerful trial lawyers to use the dispute over that state law to secure a long-sought policy goal and topple a longstanding rule governing where lawsuits can be filed in Illinois, which would have allowed lawyers to flood courts in Cook County and other famously plaintiff-friendly venues with lawsuits in pursuit of larger and easier big money verdicts.
The Illinois Supreme Court had heard arguments in the case in January.
Limiting constitutional challenges
The case at the heart of the issue had landed in Madison County Circuit Court about a year earlier, when the owners of Piasa Armory, a firearms store in downstate Alton, had filed suit to challenge the constitutionality of a politically-driven anti-gun measure known as the Illinois Firearm Industry Responsibility Act (FIRA).
The FIRA law empowers trial lawyers to sue gun sellers and firearms makers over criminal actions carried out by people who purchased their weapons. The law, for instance, has already been deployed by trial lawyers against firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson in Lake County Circuit Court, where they are attempting to secure a potentially massive payout from the company on behalf of victims of the 2022 Highland Park massacre, carried out by a man using a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle.
Smith & Wesson and Second Amendment rights advocates have said FIRA amounts to a license to gun control advocates to use lawsuits to financially devastate gun sellers and restrict the rights of Illinoisans to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
After Piasa Armory challenged the FIRA law, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul moved to transfer that lawsuit from Piasa's home county court to Sangamon County.
Raoul said the transfer was mandated under a different law, known as HB3062, which was also enacted in 2023. That law stripped Illinoisans of the right to file suit to challenge the constitutionality of a state law under the state constitution, except in courts in Cook County and Sangamon County.
Until HB3062, Illinois residents could use the legal principle known as general jurisdiction to challenge laws in any circuit court in any of the state's 102 counties.
Raoul, Pritzker and other supporters of HB3062 have said the law is needed to keep cases challenging state laws in just two locations to both allow the state to conserve resources in defending against constitutional challenges to state laws filed in less populated and more remote parts of the state, and to allow constitutional challenges to be filed in courts where the state has asserted judges are likely to have more experience and greater legal acuity to handle such constitutional questions.
They have argued centralizing the cases in just two counties where the state has its primary government offices would decrease the risk of disparate rulings coming from different judges in different places, sowing "chaos and uncertainty."
Critics of the law, however, have asserted HB3062 was politically motivated, as the state's Democratic leadership seeks to keep disputes over constitutionally questionable laws away from judges in the state's more Republican or rural counties. Critics noted the law was passed after Pritzker and his allies suffered a string of defeats in downstate courts.
Madison County Judge Ronald J. Foster Jr. rejected Raoul's attempt to transfer the case, ruling HB3062 was unconstitutional because it denied Piasa Armory their constitutional right to use their home court system in Madison County to challenge the new gun liability law.
Raoul has argued HB3062's jurisdiction limits are constitutional, because Illinoisans still have a right to sue the state, just only in the two counties that contain Chicago and Springfield.
Raoul has argued it doesn't matter if people seeking to sue the state over potentially unconstitutional laws must travel potentially many hours to press their claims, while the attorney general's lawyers would need only travel minutes to the courthouses near their main offices in Springfield and Chicago.
Because the law had been declared unconstitutional, the state was able to appeal the matter directly to the Illinois Supreme Court, bypassing the appellate court level.
The majority opinion was authored by Illinois Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth M. Rochford. All of the court's other Democrats joined in the ruling, including Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis and justices P. Scott Neville, Joy V. Cunningham and Mary K. O'Brien. One of the court's Republican justices, Lisa Holder White, also joined in the ruling in favor of the state.
Republican Justice David K. Overstreet dissented.
Not inconvenient enough?
In the ruling, the majority overturned Judge Foster's ruling, saying he had based his ruling incorrectly on the legal doctrine known as forum non conveniens. That doctrine is used by courts to determine in which court a case should be tried, and often involves weighing whether a particular court venue is too inconvenient for one of the parties, or has been filed in a court in a jurisdiction to which the parties have no real ties.
In a case such as this one, Rochford said, courts should only agree to strike down state laws limiting venue choices, like HB3062, if they can be shown to restrict people's rights to due process.
In this instance, the Piasa Armory plaintiffs couldn't show that driving more than an hour from Madison County to Springfield to press a claim that would not be decided in a trial amounted to an inconvenience that rose to the level of violating their due process rights.
They noted, for instance, that Piasa's attorneys could choose to appear in court remotely, via Zoom or other live streaming apps.
"Balancing all of the ... factors ultimately yields the conclusion that (HB3062) is not unconstitutional as applied specifically to plaintiff (Piasa Armory) because requiring plaintiff to litigate in Sangamon County does not deprive it of the opportunity to be heard at a meaningful time and in a meaningful manner," Rochford wrote for the majority. "The inconvenience asserted by plaintiff is insufficient for a due process claim, especially considering that Sangamon County is only one hour further, that this case will almost certainly be resolved without trial, and that remote appearances are possible.
"We recognize that the Attorney General could also appear remotely, but the government’s interest extends beyond the convenience of appearing in particular courtrooms, as it seeks to more efficiently handle the type of constitutional case that plaintiff has filed here.
"... Though litigating in Sangamon County may be less convenient for plaintiff than litigating in Madison County, it clearly does not rise to the level of an unconstitutional deprivation of due process," Rochford wrote.
'Silencing' opponents
In dissent, Justice Overstreet blasted the majority's decision to essentially skirt the actual legal claims underscoring the challenge to the law, saying it would allow Democrats to succeed in "chilling the constitutional claims" of Illinois Republicans and "many impoverished citizens located outside of" Chicago and Springfield, by engaging in "blatant forum shopping" - or trying to ensure the cases are heard by judges more friendly to the state government.
Overstreet noted the impact would be particularly felt by people living in some of the state's more remote corners. For instance, he noted people living in Alexander County must travel 238 miles if they wish to challenge a state law in Sangamon County, or four hours each way, or 395 miles - six hours one way - to Cook County.
"Couching this issue in terms of mere venue choice, the majority conveniently ignores the statute's clear attempt to silence the assertion of fundamental constitutional rights by citizens incurring violations outside of Sangamon and Cook Counties," Overstreet wrote. "Limiting claims asserting fundamental constitutional rights to a distant, inconvenient forum runs the very real risk that these rights will be erroneously deprived.
"Many affected by (HB3062) are of a different political affiliation than the General Assembly's majority and the Governor, and the legislature's enactment here works to silence them, along with all other claimants residing outside of the legislature's chosen forums."
Overstreet also asserted the law should be struck down for violating a key rule established by the Illinois state constitution for the passage of legislation.
Known as the "Three Readings Rule," the rule, as written in the state constitution, specifically requires all legislation to receive at least three readings – one each on three different days – in each house of the Illinois General Assembly before it receives a vote in those houses.
However, Illinois Democrats in recent years have increasingly passed controversial legislation using various procedures designed to skirt the Three Readings Rule and rush the legislation through with minimal debate before opposition can effectively mobilize.
Among these are the legislative process known as "gut and replace." Under that process, an existing piece of innocuous legislation, known as a “placeholder bill,” is amended by deleting every bit of text it had contained. It is then further amended to replace that text with much more consequential, and often controversial, legislation. Often, this takes place late at night or in the dark hours of the morning, without fanfare.
The new legislation, sometimes totaling hundreds or even thousands of pages, is then dropped on the desks of legislators, who are expected to vote on the legislation with mere hours for discussion or debate.
However, those hurried new laws have been then protected from legal challenges by a legal doctrine known as the "enrolled bill doctrine." Established decades ago by the Illinois Supreme Court, the enrolled bill doctrine essentially requires courts to take the word of the Illinois Speaker of the House and the State Senate President that the three readings rule and other constitutional rules were followed.
In his dissent, Overstreet noted HB3062 followed exactly this legislative path, as the text of HB3062 was dropped into a completely unrelated and gutted "landlord-tenant" bill which had already been read three times and voted on. It was then quickly passed by the Democratic supermajority.
Nonetheless, Overstreet noted, the unconstitutionally enacted law yet will be allowed to stand by the court's majority, as they continue to reject calls from a growing number of judges to address lawmakers' increased flouting of the constitutional lawmaking rules.
'We do not address it'
While letting HB3062 stand, as desired by the state government, the majority essentially ignored a request from trial lawyers to use the case to abolish the state's forum non conveniens rule altogether.
The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association and business groups had filed competing briefs with the Illinois Supreme Court on the question.
Should the Illinois high court have agreed with ITLA's reasoning, it could have resulted in a situation in which Illinois residents would have a right to file lawsuits in any Illinois county court they wish - except if those Illinois residents want to try to use state courts to stop the state government from enforcing potentially unconstitutional new laws.
In the new decision, the Illinois Supreme Court only addressed ITLA's arguments in a footnote, saying: "That subject is not at issue in this appeal, so we do not address it."