With spring recess coming to a close and the General Assembly’s legislative session picking up steam, Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran (R-Downers Grove) said Gov. J.B. Pritzker should take note after a Madison County judge declared his forum law unconstitutional as applied to plaintiffs residing or injured outside of his preferred jurisdictions.
“This is the second bill that Gov. Pritzker has signed into law over the last year that the courts have already found to be unconstitutional,” Curran said. “As we get further along in this legislative session, this ruling should be a caution sign for the Governor and his legislative allies to stop with the power grabs that seek to suppress the constitutional rights of Illinois citizens.”
The law, which originated as House Bill 3062, was passed by the 103rd General Assembly and signed into law by Pritzker last June. It requires that all constitutional challenges be filed in either Cook or Sangamon County Circuit Courts.
Curran told the Record that he voted against the bill last year, calling it "government overreach." He said the law is “bad public policy” and “disenfranchises the voters in the vast majority of the state.”
He explained that under the new forum law, only voters in Cook and Sangamon Counties would get to elect the judges hearing constitutional challenges brought by all Illinois residents.
In other words, the law strips circuit courts in 100 of Illinois’ 102 counties of their power to preside over these challenges. Prior to the new law, any party challenging the constitutionality of a controversial law had the authority to file their case in any of the state’s 25 judicial circuits.
Curran said that not only is the venue law unconstitutional, it is also unnecessary. Illinois already has a system that funnels court disputes up to one court - the Illinois Supreme Court - and those judges are selected by all Illinois residents.
“So there is no basis for the governor’s right to fight these adverse rulings,” he said.
Curran acknowledged that the case filed on behalf of Piasa Armory, an Alton gun store, by Wood River attorney Thomas Maag is unique, as it challenges both the forum law and Pritzker’s firearm liability law.
“This legal challenge is likely to strike down not only one overreach by Gov. Pritzker, but two,” he said.
In regards to the venue challenge, Maag wrote that Pritzker and the Illinois legislature enacted the rule limiting jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to Cook and Sangamon Counties after “having been successfully sued on multiple occasions in recent years for violating the constitutional rights of citizens of Illinois.”
Curran couldn’t speculate on why the law was passed, but he agreed that the majority of adverse court rulings against Pritzker’s agenda have come from the southern part of the state.
In regards to the firearm liability law, or the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act, Curran said it is so vague that he doesn’t think any gun manufacturer is able to comply.
Curran was also critical of Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s claim that courts outside of Cook and Sangamon Counties are burdensome, saying the attorney general must be “prepared to step into a courtroom in any of the 102 counties of the state.”
He added that Raoul is “trying to justify a law that is a blatant overreach, that I believe is unconstitutional.”
“I just think this case highlights why a citizen located anywhere in the state should be able to go to their local courthouse and challenge an action by the state on constitutional merits,” Curran said.
Raoul objected to Madison County jurisdiction and moved to transfer Piasa Armory’s case to Sangamon County, which was denied by Madison County Associate Judge Ronald Foster on March 4.
Foster concluded that transferring the case will deprive the plaintiff of the ability to put up its best challenge to the firearm liability law.
“The court finds the government interest here minimal at best,” Foster wrote. “Sangamon County is not more important than any other county in this state. The fact that it is the seat of state government is ultimately irrelevant. Based on the record before the court, the General Assembly will not be called as witnesses.”
“The Attorney General is responsible for representing the state and its officers in court in every county,” he added. “Therefore, for all these reasons, transferring this action to Sangamon County would simply make it more difficult for the plaintiff to prosecute its constitutional claims.”
“While this court acknowledges without hesitation that the judges in Sangamon County would impartially handle this case, the reality remains that the greater the distance between the parties, witnesses, the sources of evidence, the more arduous it becomes to access the courthouse,” he continued.
Both parties appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court, where the case is currently pending.
Piasa Armory's constitutional challenge
Maag filed the lawsuit on Aug. 17 on behalf of Piasa Armory, which is a dealer of firearms and firearm accessories in Alton.
He seeks a declaration that the law is unconstitutional and an injunction barring its enforcement.
“Under HB0218, a dealer of firearms and firearm accessories, including Piasa Armory, LLC, may potentially be named in a civil action as a defendant by the Attorney General of Illinois for third parties misuse of firearms and firearms products,” Maag wrote.
However, Maag argues that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) immunizes gun dealers from such claims.
He also argues that the liability law is void for vagueness for failing to specify what speech is targeted and is inconsistent with the nation’s historical tradition.
Maag also took aim at the venue law, urging Foster to maintain Madison County jurisdiction.
He argues that the venue law is “designed to limit Second Amendment and related challenges to forums that the state considers either more friendly to its position, or sufficiently inconvenient to would-be plaintiffs to deter such actions from being filed in the first place, and abolishes forum non conveniens for those cases, no matter how inconvenient or inaccessible the forum is to the victim of the constitutional violation, and no matter where the effect of the Constitutional violation took place.”
“In fact, one of the great crimes against the colonies of King George III, prior to the Revolution, as noted in the Declaration of Independence was, in essence, fixing venue in far off and inconvenient lands,” Maag wrote.
“The legal rights which a litigant might seek to exercise or protect exist only to the extent they are enforceable through the court system,” he added. “Depriving a litigant of the opportunity to use the courts effectively makes these legal rights worthless, which is the intent of the statute, so as to allow the state to violate the Constitution with relative impunity.”
“By making forums far off and inconvenient, and with possibly no connection to the dispute, the challenged statute substantially increases the likelihood of an inability to bring a successful constitutional challenge, especially by the infirm and impoverished, the weakest among us,” he continued.
Madison County Circuit Court case number 23-LA-1129