SPRINGFIELD – Legislators have begun drawing maps to change boundaries of Supreme Court districts, according to the Illinois Civil Justice League.
On May 18, the ICJL warned that a Democratic majority in the General Assembly might use redistricting as a means to retain a majority on the Supreme Court.
“Democrats will cite a host of political reasons to choose this time in this decade for overhauling the Supreme Court districts,” the ICJL report says.
Republicans have never held a majority on the Court under the 1970 Constitution.
Third District voters placed that record in jeopardy last year by denying retention to Justice James Kilbride, who won a seat as a Democrat in 2000.
Kilbride’s temporary replacement, Justice Bob Carter, preserves the Democratic majority at 4-3 until next year’s election.
Also next year, Second District voters will replace Justice Robert Thomas, who won his seat as a Republican.
Justice Michael Burke, a Republican, holds the seat by temporary appointment.
-The current map designates Cook County as the First District, with three Justices.
-The Second District runs from Chicago suburbs to Galena in Jo Daviess County on the Mississippi River.
-The Third District runs from Rock Island to Peoria and Joliet.
-The Fourth District runs from Quincy to Springfield and Champaign.
-The Fifth District runs from Madison and St. Clair counties into rural areas south, east, and northeast.
The Second through Fifth districts once met a constitutional requirement of substantially equal population, but now they don’t come close.
The census bureau estimated Second District population at 3,194,413 in 2019, and estimated the Fifth District at 1,270,953.
Boundary changes could fix that, but the ICJL sketched out a map of nearly equal population and spotted possible problems.
The map didn’t change the First District but it rebuilt the others.
Instead of extending the Second and Third Districts from Cook County to the Iowa border, the ICJL predicts them squeezed down to nine counties near Chicago.
That left the rest of Illinois to share two districts instead of the current three.
Nineteen of 20 counties in the Third District would join the Fourth District, which would run along Interstate 74 from Champaign through Peoria to Rock Island.
The Fifth District, which now stops at Godfrey, Taylorville, and Effingham, would expand northward and capture the state Capitol.
Under this scenario, according to the ICJL, all seven Third District appellate judges would live inside the Fourth District.
The ICJL stated that no elected Third District judge lives in Will County.
“Four of the six judges are up for retention in 2022 and 2024, and would be theoretically unqualified to run for retention in the old territory,” its report states.
The ICJL quoted the state Constitution that no change in boundaries shall affect the tenure in office of a judge or associate judges at the time of such change.
“Therefore, a reasonable assumption would be that currently sitting judges in the current Second, Third, and Fourth Districts would need to move into the new districts prior to a future retention candidacy,” according to the ICJL.
“Despite the inherent problems of appellate judges sitting in new districts with residents that did not elect them, only five of 24 judges would be sitting in old districts after the November 2024 election.”
The map would greatly strengthen Fifth District judges, not only by adding blocks of counties but also by conferring jurisdiction over state government.
On the other hand, Springfield already has an appellate court and legislators might prefer changing its number to shutting it down.
The ICJL noted that the Fifth District courthouse in Mount Vernon holds the last active courtroom in which Abraham Lincoln argued a case.
The current disparity among districts resulted from reform of a greater disparity.
Prior to 1964, Cook County didn’t elect three Supreme Court judges.
It didn’t even elect one for itself, sharing that decision with DuPage, Lake, Will, and Kankakee counties.
At that time Illinois operated a variety of courts in each county, often with overlapping jurisdiction.
Reformers proposed to solve both problems by providing fair representation to Cook County and placing all authority in circuit courts.
The General Assembly submitted a constitutional amendment to voters in 1957, but it fell short of the necessary two thirds in 1958.
A reform group contested the result in Lake County circuit court, but a judge dismissed the petition and the Supreme Court affirmed the decision in 1960.
The reform group pushed the plan again in 1961, and bar associations of the state and Chicago also pushed a plan.
They reached a compromise on the power of circuit judges by having them run first as partisan candidates and stand for nonpartisan retention for further terms.
Retention required a simple majority.
Cook County, which contained a little more than half the state’s population, settled for less than half of the Supreme Court as a big improvement.
The compromise created five districts but set no boundaries, leaving legislators to apply the rule of substantially equal population.
It set no period or process for changing the map.
Voters adopted the compromise by amendment in 1962, effective Jan. 1, 1964.
Legislators drew district maps in 1963.
The Second District contained 1,363,306 persons as of 1960, the Third contained 1,266,779, the Fourth contained 1,119,331, and the Fifth contained 1,202,055.
The Constitutional Convention of 1970 mostly adopted the 1964 measure, but raised the retention requirement to 60 percent.
That year’s census found Second District population grew 30 percent in 10 years.
By 2010, one in four Illinois residents lived in the Second District.
One in seven lived in the Third District, and one in 10 lived in the Fourth and Fifth.
Cook County’s share of state population dropped to 40 percent, giving it a slight advantage in holding three of seven seats for 43 percent.
By 2019, according to census estimates, Illinois population fell by about 160,000.
Estimates show all districts lost population except the Second, which barely grew.
Here is a look at districts from 1960 until present population estimates.