(The Center Square) – Residents looking to sue the state of Illinois on constitutional challenges to state law would only be able to file lawsuits in Sangamon and Cook counties in a measure ready to be sent to the governor.
The Senate passed House Bill 3062 late last week. Thursday, state Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, explained the reason Democrats are bringing the bill in the House.
“Over the past three years, the attorney general’s office has been forced to respond to, I would say in many cases, frivolous lawsuits that have strained the office’s limited resources,” Hoffman said Thursday during floor debate. “Whether they were COVID-related restrictions, whether they were masks, whether they were vaccines, whether they were SAFE-T Acts, whether they were assault weapons bans, and the list goes on and on.”
Republicans said if the attorney general’s resources are spread too thin, the legislature shouldn’t have passed other bills allowing the office to sue the gun industry or to go after pregnancy resource centers that don’t offer abortions.
State Rep. Dan Ugaste, R-Geneva, said there are remedies if resources are stretched.
“A petition can be filed and the cases can be consolidated already in a venue of the [Illinois Supreme Court’s] choosing,” Ugaste said.
State Reps. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, Patrick Windhorst, R-Harrisburg, Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur, and Dan Ugaste, R-Geneva, debate a bill to limit where people can sue the state.
He blasted the measure as being detrimental to the ability of indigent people in southern Illinois who may want to bring an action against the state.
State Rep. Dan Caulkins, R-Decatur, who brought a lawsuit in Macon County challenging Illinois’ gun ban, said the bill is similar to the tyranny of King George III.
“The Democrats today are doing the very same thing. They pass unconstitutional laws to make law-abiding citizens criminals and then they make those same citizens travel hundreds of miles to go to a kangaroo court that they control,” Caulkins said.
The measure, which does not apply to claims arising out of collective bargaining disputes between the state and unions, can now be sent to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s desk.
This article First appeared in the center square