SPRINGFIELD, Ill.鈥� The Illinois Supreme Court is being asked to decide on the constitutionality of a that says constitutional challenges to state laws and actions can only be filed in Cook or Sangamon counties.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul鈥檚 office on Monday filed an appeal directly to the Supreme Court after a Madison County judge last week ruled that the law violated the due process rights of one plaintiff in a lawsuit in that jurisdiction.
Last year, the General Assembly passed with only Democratic support, and Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law June 6. It came in response to the large number of constitutional challenges that were filed in multiple jurisdictions , as well as a law ending cash bail in Illinois and the state鈥檚 2021 .
During debate on the bill last year, Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, accused plaintiffs in those cases of 鈥渇orum shopping鈥� in order to have their cases heard by judges friendly to their cause. The attorney general鈥檚 office complained that its resources were being stretched thin by having to defend those cases in courthouses scattered throughout the state.
In a March 4 ruling, however, Madison County Circuit Judge Ronald J. Foster said the new law imposed even more of a burden on at least one plaintiff in his court, and he struck it down as unconstitutional.
The case at issue there involved a constitutional challenge to another recent gun law passed by the General Assembly, the , which subjects gun dealers and manufacturers to civil penalties for violations of the state鈥檚 consumer protection laws.
Just days after that law took effect, Piasa Armory LLC, a gun store in Alton, filed suit in Madison County challenging its constitutionality. The state then sought to move the case to either Sangamon or Cook County, but the gun store objected and argued that the law limiting where such cases could be filed should be overturned.
In his decision, Foster wrote the law was unconstitutional as it applied to Piasa Armory because moving the case to either Sangamon or Cook County would severely inconvenience the plaintiff. And even if the court proceedings were conducted remotely via Zoom or any other video conferencing platform, he said, they could just as easily be conducted in Madison County as Sangamon or Cook County.
As of Monday afternoon, the Supreme Court had not yet issued a schedule for hearing the case.
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