The Illinois Supreme Court declined to preemptively jump into a court battle over Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s (D) executive authority Monday, despite the state attorney general’s request.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul had asked for a legal review of a challenge lodged by state Rep. Darren Bailey (R) centered on Pritzker’s successive coronavirus emergency declarations. Bailey argued that Pritzker did not have the authority to issue multiple emergency declarations based on the same, ongoing pandemic under the state’s Emergency Management Agency Act.
A Clay County circuit court judge agreed, granting Bailey a temporary reprieve from having to abide by Pritzker’s stay-at-home order.
Raoul immediately appealed the decision, and also asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in.
Pritzker acknowledged at his press conference Monday that it would have been odd for the Supreme Court to insert itself into the process at this early juncture.
“It’s an unusual circumstance that the Supreme Court would, in fact, take a case directly from circuit court and not let it go through the normal process,” he said, though adding, “I think it was the right thing to do for the attorney general to seek Supreme Court intervention.”
“They’re not saying they’re not gonna rule on it ever, they’re just saying they don’t want to skip over the appellate court, is my understanding,” he said.
In his request to the state Supreme Court, Raoul pointed to the copycat cases that had sprung up across the state, as well as the still unresolved questions in Bailey’s specific case. Bailey had asked the appellate court to vacate the lower court’s order so he could submit an amended complaint, which it granted. He did not, however, voluntarily dismiss his own case with prejudice, guaranteeing, per Raoul, “a likelihood of future recurrence of the question raised in this case.”
“Indeed, the deleterious effects of the circuit court’s order — even though dissolved — will not cease unless and until this Court makes a definitive pronouncement on the scope of the Governor’s authority to protect the health, safety, and welfare of Illinois residents during a global pandemic,” Raoul wrote in his emergency motion.
Much of the state is currently on track to reopen more nonessential businesses and allow gatherings of 10 or fewer people at the end of May under the governor’s plan, though Chicago and its surrounding suburbs are still seeing a higher concentration of COVID-19 cases than the rest of the state.
As of Tuesday morning, the state had 79,007 confirmed cases and 3,459 deaths, per the state department of health.
Read the Supreme Court order here:
Good. Correct decision.
Everyone in America should have defied this illegal act by every politician who advocated house arrest of everyone. None of them had the legal authority under any present legal statute to enforce their dictatorship. I have not followed any such b.s. and have actively been trying to get infected since I know I’ll never exhibit any symptoms anyhow. I’ll never wear one of these horrible muzzles either. I’m 72, perfect health and never had the flu so far this lifetime. Nor will I. I live in Cortez, CO.
You would be wrong about everything you just said, and you’re a prime example of the selfishness that is right wing America today. If you want to get infected, go volunteer in an ICU like my sister, maybe you’ll have your chance to take the virus on and see how great it is, or watch the misery of all the other people who are dying from it, and consider what it would be like to have your friends and family do so. But no, you just want your selfish little world not to change, and don’t care at all for any of the Americans around you, even their ability to live. Sad to see so many Americans who don’t actually understand the Constitution and why the nation was founded.
Or as Roman jurists used to say …
Except vaccination and quarantine orders have long been held both legal and constitutional. The sole reason for this temper tantrum is protecting Trumps campaign and if the shoe was on the other foot, the GOP would be kicking everyone with it to protect their power and their own reelections by preventing the pandemic from spreading. The rallying cries about alleged tyranny are nothing but partisan nonsense.