SPRINGFIELD – Statewide issues like virus mandates and judicial gerrymandering land on the bench of the Fourth District appellate court where voters haven’t picked a Democrat in 24 years.
The district’s most recent Democrat victory happened in 1998, with the election of current U.S. District Judge Sue Myerscough of the Central District of Illinois.
That year, Myerscough ran without opposition in her primary while Republicans split almost evenly, with 54,589 votes for Thomas Appleton and 54,478 for John Davis.
Myerscough defeated Appleton by 213,378 to 183,138.
The Fourth District didn’t figure into the 2000 election.
In 2002, Myerscough ran for nomination to the Illinois Supreme Court without opposition.
In the Republican primary, Rita Garman defeated Robert Steigmann for Supreme Court nomination by 94,155 to 54,278.
For the Fourth District Appellate Court that year, Bill Trapp won the Democrat nomination and John Turner won the Republican nomination, both without opposition.
Results in November showed the tide had turned.
Garman defeated Myerscough by 225,693 to 198,500, and Turner defeated Trapp by 231,381 to 176,985.
The Fourth District didn’t figure into an election again until 2010, when Appleton won the primary and the general election without opposition.
President Obama nominated Myerscough for federal district judge in 2010, and the Senate confirmed her in 2011.
Carol Pope filled her vacancy in 2012, without an opponent in the Republican primary or the general election.
Lisa Holder White filled a vacancy in 2014, without an opponent in the Republican primary or the general election.
The Fourth District didn’t figure into the election of 2016.
In 2017, the Supreme Court assigned chief circuit judge Craig DeArmond of Danville to the Fourth District.
In 2018, after Appleton and Pope left their seats vacant, Thomas Harris and Pete Cavanagh replaced them without primary or general opposition.
The Fourth District didn’t figure into the 2020 election.
The district will take a different shape at the end of this year, losing counties to the southern Fifth District and gaining counties from the northern Third District.
Yet, the Fourth District remains a forum for disputes involving the entire state.
From Nov. 12 through Feb. 12, judges there resolved a vaccination suit against six agencies and three actions that each involved a single agency.
In the vaccination case, state employees working in congregate care asserted a religious objection against a mandate due to the use of fetal cells.
Adams County judge Scott Larson granted a restraining order, but Fourth District judges Cavanagh, Turner, and Holder White found he lacked jurisdiction.
“The Illinois labor relations board has exclusive jurisdiction over claims of unfair labor practices,” Cavanagh wrote.
In another case Cavanagh roasted the labor board for the way it terminated the electrical union’s representation of certain employees in the city of Sullivan.
He found the record entirely devoid of anything evidencing a board investigation.
“The board must follow its own rules as those rules have force of law,” Cavanagh wrote.
Knecht and Holder White concurred.
In a case about an oil pipeline from Hamilton to Joppa, the court ordered the commerce commission to improve its case for more pumps.
“We express no view one way or the other whether permission to construct the pumping stations should be granted,” Cavanagh wrote.
He wrote that in making a decision, commissioners should regard a reference in law to the public as the people of the United States and not the world.
Harris and Steigmann concurred.
In a case about an ash pond at a power plant near Peoria, the judges found Ameren prematurely filed suit over environmental protection agency fees.
They affirmed Sangamon County judge Adam Giganti, who dismissed the suit.
DeArmond wrote that Ameren treated a preliminary notice as the equivalent of a final administrative act.
He wrote that upon receiving notice Ameren was free to respond and attempt to settle with the agency.
Turner and Steigmann concurred.
Fourth District judges resolved disputes in counties too.
They reversed a ruling of Champaign County judge Jason Bohm, who found county executive Darlene Kloeppel had power to appoint board members.
DeArmond wrote that such power belonged to the county board chairman, and Cavanagh and Steigmann concurred.
Judges affirmed Logan County judge William Yoder in dismissing a suit against the county zoning board’s approval of a limestone quarry.
Holder White wrote that property owners Stephen and Pamela Schreiner failed to demonstrate that the zoning board violated due process.
She wrote that they offered no evidence that they were denied notice or an opportunity to be heard.
Knecht and Cavanagh concurred.
Decisions in civil cases involved death in a nursing home, injury at an apartment, a job that ended, and a relationship that ended.
Judges affirmed Larson of Adams County in compelling the estate of Doris Mason to arbitrate Survival Act claims against St. Vincent’s Home.
Larson stayed a wrongful death claim pending arbitration on survival.
The estate claimed an arbitration clause in Mason’s contract was unconscionable and it terminated on her death, but Turner disagreed.
“While the issue of whether a contract to arbitrate exists must be determined by the court, matters of interpretation are for an arbitrator to decide initially,” Turner wrote.
Harris and Holder White concurred.
DeArmond, Knecht and Steigmann affirmed McLean County judge Paul Lawrence in relieving Farmers Insurance of coverage for an injury on rental property.
Plaintiff Cynthia Donnelly alleged ambiguity from references to tenants and residents in her landlord’s policy.
“Insurance policy terms are ambiguous only when they are reasonably susceptible to more than one meaning,” DeArmond wrote.
DeArmond, Turner, and Holder White affirmed Lawrence in dismissing Rose Stade’s retaliatory discharge suit against Heritage nursing home in Bloomington.
DeArmond wrote that they didn’t consider elements of retaliatory discharge because they found the element of discharge lacking.
Harris, Knecht, and Cavanagh affirmed Bohm of McLean County in finding Wendy Jablow failed to state a cause of action against Stephen Marsh.
Jablow alleged unjust enrichment from no less than 40 hours she spent working for Marsh’s business for free.
She also alleged intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Harris found no suggestion that Jablow intended her services to be anything but gratuitous and no allegation that she did so under duress.
On the distress claim, Harris found Marsh’s conduct did not meet the standard of extreme and outrageous.
Two big cases pending at the Fourth District include a decision on the temporary restraining order issued by Sangamon County Judge Raylene Grischow involving school masking, as well as Madison County’s lawsuit against the state over a law severing its judiciary into subcircuits.