BENTON – Governor JB Pritzker follows the Illinois Constitution when he places medical advice above it, Attorney General Kwame Raoul argues in U.S. district court.
Assistant attorney general Douglas Rees laid out Raoul’s case for Pritzker on June 2, in motions to dismiss two suits asserting a right to open for business.
Dookie’s bar in Carlyle and Louisville hair stylist Sonja Harrison claim the Public Health Act requires notice and a hearing before the state can close a business.
According to Rees, the Act has no bearing on Pritzker’s authority under emergency management law or the state Constitution.
He wrote that the right to operate a business is not fundamental and that constitutional rights must yield to emergency measures.
Pritzker “merely implemented the medical directives of leading public health experts,” he wrote.
Due process “is a flexible concept that only calls for such procedural protections as the particular situation demands.”
“Plaintiff’s private interest at issue is not sufficiently substantial to merit such process,” he wrote.
Rees denied their claim that Pritzker forcibly closed their businesses.
“To the contrary, the order permitted nonessential businesses to reopen for the limited purpose of fulfilling telephone and online orders through pickup outside the store and delivery,” he wrote.
“Plaintiffs may wish to serve customers in additional ways, but this private interest is relatively slight by the standards of due process jurisprudence.”
He wrote that it would take years if not decades for Pritzker to provide a closure hearing to every nonessential business.
In Dookie’s case he argued that corporations don’t have liberty interests.
As for Harrison, he wrote that the right to pursue a profession is not a fundamental right for substantive due process purposes.
He wrote that the limit on their operations is constitutional so long as it passes rational basis scrutiny.
He wrote that it must merely bear a rational relationship to some legitimate end.
“This standard is easily satisfied,” he wrote.
“Plaintiffs’ claims are doomed in their entirety because the governor’s actions were authorized by Illinois law and not forbidden by either the federal or state constitutions.”
Dookie’s sued Pritzker in Clinton County, and Harrison sued him in Clay County.
Pritzker removed both suits to district court.
Their lawyer Steven Wallace of Glen Carbon also represents state Rep. Darren Bailey of Louisville in a liberty suit at district court.
Pritzker removed Bailey’s suit from Clay County, and Bailey filed an emergency motion to remand it.
Sison set a June 5 deadline for Raoul to oppose Bailey’s motion.
Thomas DeVore of Greenville represented Dookie’s and Harrison in state courts, but district court hasn’t admitted him.
DeVore and Wallace practice at Silver Lake Group in Highland along with Erik Hyam, who appeared with DeVore in state courts.