SPRINGFIELD — Attorney General Kwame Raul filed a petition Monday with the Court of Appeals to revoke a temporary injunction issued late Friday afternoon.
Raul’s office filed a petition with the Fifth District Court of Appeals in Southern Illinois, arguing that Effingham County Judge Joshua Morrison abused his discretion and the plaintiffs were unlikely to win the case. .
Morrison’s late Friday order only applies to the more than 800 plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by unsuccessful 2022 Republican attorney general nominee Tom DeVore.
In a statement shortly after the order was announced, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said, “It’s a shame, but the first time we’ve seen it in many cases brought by plaintiffs whose goal is to promote ideology over public safety. It is the result,” he said.
House Speaker Emmanuel “Chris” Welch, D-Hillside, and Senate Speaker Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, issued similar statements within hours of the judge’s decision.
“I passed the Illinois Community Protection Act to keep dangerous weapons off the streets and create a safer state,” Harmon said in a statement. I look forward to the day when I will enthusiastically defend my neighbor who is sick of it.”
However, the Illinois Rifle Association has filed a separate challenge in federal court, saying the ruling “clearly shows” that Pritzker and lawmakers “unjustly pushed through this law,” and Morrison’s ruling. praised the
In Friday’s ruling, Morrison questioned whether the law violated due process and equal protection rights because it limits most people’s Second Amendment rights to hold and carry certain firearms. It upheld plaintiffs’ claim that there was a legitimate problem. It exempts some groups of people from the law, but not others.
But Morrison also noted the procedural shortcuts lawmakers used to pass bills, especially when the General Assembly was facing statutory or constitutional deadlines, routinely used to pass bills quickly. Many of the opinions were also devoted to shortcuts to be made.
In this case, the bill on which the law is based, House Bill 5471, passed in its final form in both houses during the last two days of Congress’s “lame duck” session earlier this month, and Pritzker voted on the night of January 10. signed the bill. The next day he was sworn in by the newly elected MPs at noon on January 11, and his first session in two years began anew.
A House committee held multiple hearings on the bill in December, at which time the draft wording of the bill was contained in HB5855.
The Illinois Constitution requires each House to read bills by subject on three different days, a process that typically takes at least five days to complete. But at the end of the lame duck meeting, lawmakers didn’t have much time, so they engaged in a commonly used operation known as “gut and replace.”
That means the Senate has adopted legislation that has already passed the House. In this case, it was a bill that would amend the portion of the state’s insurance law dealing with public assessors, deleting it entirely and replacing it with language banning assault weapons. They then sent the “amended” bill back to the House for a yes or no vote.
“This court finds that defendants have plainly and materially violated the three-time reading rule of the Illinois Constitution to circumvent constitutional requirements and avoid public debate,” Morrison wrote. .
Morrison also said he believes the bill violates the constitutional requirement that a bill be limited to one subject unless it deals with appropriating, codifying, amending or reorganizing the budget. rice field. He said the Assault Weapons Bill violates its provisions because it also contains provisions related to human trafficking and drug trafficking.
However, the Illinois Supreme Court has historically refused to invalidate statutes based on either of these two claims. – Guess that decision.
Morrison has just been voted 4th.th Circuit Judge in November. Prior to that, he was a state attorney for Fayette County, known as the SAFE-T Act, who sued the state to challenge the constitutionality of the sweeping criminal justice reform bill passed in 2021. He was the only one in the group.
In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Morrison wrote to Raul questioning the enforceability of Pritzker’s emergency order at the time. Quoted as part of
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect the Attorney General’s latest legal papers.
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