EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. (Legal Newsline) - On Friday, Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Haine filed a lawsuit to stop implementation of a law signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, on Jan. 7 that creates judicial subcircuits in politically targeted counties in Illinois, including Madison. The law, which denies many rural Madison County residents the right to vote for local judges until 2030, shocked county officials with its secrecy and brazenness.
Republican lawmakers, in the minority in both the state House and Senate, said they were made aware of the plan to create the subcircuits only days before its passage.
“I serve on the Senate Redistricting Committee and this legislation did not come from there, I can guarantee that,” State Senator Jason Plummer (R-Edwardsville) told the Madison-St. Clair Record.
Madison County State's Attorney Tom Haine
“This is all about special interests and not the voters,” he added. “The bill has a lot of issues and clearly is very arbitrary. It's wide open for a legal challenge.”
Haine’s lawsuit filed in Sangamon County, home to the state capitol in Springfield, cites numerous constitutional issues with the law including the fact that “the General Assembly and Governor are unauthorized to prescribe the manner in which judges are selected and elected…”
Haine is asking for a stay on implementation. A hearing could be scheduled as early as Monday.
“This sub-circuit law has serious Constitutional issues and is being rushed forward in a reckless way,” Haine said in a statement. “We are arguing that a pause is warranted here to let clearer heads prevail. With this pause, our upcoming 2022 judicial elections can be held countywide, as they have always been, while the courts closely review this very dubious new sub-circuit scheme.”
The lawsuit comes less than a week after the Madison County Board voted 21-2, with Democrats joining Republicans, to recommend that the State’s Attorney explore all legal options to stop implementation of the law.
Under the new law, countywide voting is out, and residents of the newly created third subcircuit, which includes northern and rural parts of the county, get to vote for two judges, not three as in the other two new subcircuits, and they don’t get to vote until the seventh and eighth judicial vacancies occur, which could be many years. By then, boundaries are likely to have changed after the next decennial census in 2030.
The gerrymandering of the seats, moreover, targets two Republican Circuit Judges, Chris Threlkeld and Amy Sholar, who are seeking retention. Instead of running as resident judges of the Third Judicial Circuit's Madison County, the judges are now required to run in the heavily Democratic first subcircuit, which runs along the Mississippi. Both had to quickly change their residences so they could begin circulating nominating petitions for the November election.
State Rep. Amy Elik (R-Fosterburg) told the Record that the motivation for the law was “purely political.”
“St. Clair County is similar in population but it wasn’t included in the legislation,” she said.
Elik said Madison County was targeted because the longtime Democratic stronghold is trending Republican, and that’s in part because its courts, friendly to the plaintiffs’ bar, have made it a magnet for excessive, and lucrative, asbestos lawsuits.
The county, in fact, yearly earns a designation as one of the nation’s top “Judicial Hellholes,” by the American Tort Reform Association, a Washington D.C.-based group working to stem lawsuit abuse.
Political donations from the plantiffs’ bar heavily favor Democratic candidates.
Proponents of the new law argue that it will increase diversity in the courts, but Elik said they never presented proof that establishing subcircuits would accomplish that.
The county, moreover, already passes the diversity test. The Black population is nine percent, and two of 22 judges (nine elected and 13 appointed in the two county judicial circuit) are Black -- nine percent.
Diversity and inclusion is also used as a rationale by proponents of legislation in Congress that would federalize the nation’s elections, legislation that was shot down on the Senate floor last week.
Proponents claim federal control would counter moves by Georgia and other states that restricted voter access when they tightened their election laws after unsecure election practices were ushered during the height of the pandemic. This, even though minority participation in Georgia and other states is at an all-time high, and that many blue states, including President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, have more restrictive voting laws than Georgia.
“One effort is at the macro level and another effort is clearly targeted for a certain constituency at the micro level,” Plummer said, comparing the federal election initiatives to the Illinois law.
"But what’s obvious is that in both instances certain Democrats have decided they are uncomfortable with how voters are voting," he said. "Instead of trying to win the game by promoting popular policies and earning the support of the people they are supposed to represent, they just want to bully people around and try to change the rules of the game. In Illinois’ case it’s the tyranny of the Springfield majority and it’s not healthy for the Metro East and it’s not healthy for our democracy.”