Articles Posted in Constitutional Rights

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed into law the Collective Bargaining Freedom Act, which became effective April 12, 2019. Under the new law, local governments will no longer be able to pass right-to-work ordinances.

The legislation is a signal of Gov. Pritzker’s approach to workforce regulation. A similar bill was passed in the previous General Assembly session, but the law was vetoed by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner.

The Act explains, “It is the policy of the State of Illinois that employers, employees, and their labor organizations are free to negotiate collectively.”

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The Illinois Supreme Court has held that sentencing a juvenile to a prison sentence of greater than 40 years violates his or her Eighth Amendment rights because it imposes a de facto life sentence.

The defendant in this case was a juvenile at the time of the offense. The juvenile was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder and discharging a firearm, which caused the victim’s death. The trial court merged the first-degree murder counts and sentenced the juvenile defendant to 25 years on the first-degree murder charges and 25 years for the mandatory firearm add-on.

The juvenile filed a pro se petition for post conviction relief, alleging that the sentence was unconstitutional and violated the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama, which stated that imposing a mandatory life sentence on a juvenile without consideration of the defendant’s youth and attendant characteristics violated the Eighth Amendment because it constituted a de facto life sentence that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has reversed a decision by a district court judge of the Southern District of Illinois. Reginald Pittman was a pretrial detainee in the Madison County Jail when he hanged himself from the bars of his cell with a blanket. He did not die, but he sustained brain damage that left him in a vegetative state, cared for entirely by his mother without any government benefits.

Pittman had left a suicide note in which he stated that he was killing himself because the guards were not letting him see crisis counselors. His mother brought this lawsuit against Madison County, as well as jail staffers, charging deliberate indifference by guards and other jail staff to the risk of his attempting suicide, in violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In 2011, the federal district court judge granted summary judgment in favor of all the defendants, but the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed as to Randy Eaton and Matt Warner, two of the jail’s guards, on the ground that there was a genuine issue of fact as to whether they had been deliberately indifferent to the risk that Pittman would attempt suicide.

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The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners has been involved with the U.S. Department of Justice and Equip for Equality for the last ten months in an effort to evaluate what needs to be done to ensure that every Chicago voter is able to cast a ballot.

The U.S. Department of Justice was contemplating a lawsuit to make sure that the City of Chicago made voting accessible for all, including the disabled. According to the report on the threatened lawsuit and the headway made in resolving this dispute, it was noted that some polling places and early voting sites failed to pass muster under the federal voting accessibility laws that went into effect in 2016.

The City of Chicago should be required to modify polling places to ensure all disabled and handicapped voters are able to cast their election ballots. In some polling places, measures are needed to build ramps, widen doorways and make sure that doors are not difficult to open for voters who are blind or seated in wheelchairs.

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The Illinois Supreme Court has handed down a decision that affirmed a December 2015 ruling by Cook County Associate Judge William E. Gomolinski. The original lawsuit was a medical-malpractice case filed no more than a month after the law, which permitted a unilateral decision by a party to empanel 6-person juries.

The law was approved in the days just after Illinois Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner defeated Democratic Gov. Patrick J. Quinn in 2014 and was seen by many as a gift from Democrats to their allies in the plaintiffs’ bar. The argument for the law was that jurors were not paid appropriately for missing work or taking time away from family and school. The law also had increased the rate the jurors were paid across the state from a high of $17.20 per day in Cook County to $25 on the first day of service and $50 each day thereafter.

It was also argued that federal courts and other states use 6-member juries without issue. But Section 1, Article 13 of the State Constitution says, “[T]he right to trial by jury as heretofore enjoyed shall remain inviolate.”

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Three Illinois workers and two public worker unions waited for the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on a carbon copy of their union-fee dispute. The case they were waiting on from the Supreme Court was Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. Because of the death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin G. Scalia, there was 4-4 split on the issue of whether mandatory payment of union fees for nonmember public workers is a First Amendment violation.

Because of the spit decision,  the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in Friedrichs stands, but does not create a national precedent.

“Our case is in a strong position to be the next case on this topic that the Supreme Court takes up,” said attorney Jacob H. Huebert of the Liberty Justice Center, which represents the three plaintiff workers challenging whether union fees should be paid for nonmembers.

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There’s a big difference in requiring a photo ID to board an airplane and the right to vote.  Voting in America is a precious right; eligibility is established in the United States Constitution, its amendments, by state laws and by various acts of Congress. Because the Constitution does not have particular language on voting except for the Fourteenth Amendment (1868), the Fifteen Amendment (1870) , the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), the Twenty-Fourth Amendment  (1964) and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment (1971), the states have wide discretion to establish the legal qualifications for voting.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a very hard-fought law that sought to end the decades of Jim Crow voting restrictions of African-Americans living in the South particularly. In 1964 fewer than half of all registered African-Americans living in the Jim Crow South were eligible to vote. Now 70% of African-Americans are registered to vote. About 65% of registered African-Americans voted in the last two presidential elections.

Even those statistics, being promising, are under a vicious attack in an effort to restrict voting. It is no  surprise that most of the states that have recently passed onerous voting restrictions have governments that are overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans. There are easily accessible videos to view in which state legislators in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and the Deep South have candidly said out loud that with voting restriction laws in place — laws shortening voter registration dates and times, laws eliminating or drastically curtailing early voting — African-Americans, Hispanics and persons of color, the disabled and the poor will not have the ability to cast votes.  The poorly hidden purpose of the voting restrictions is clear — to limit those who are more likely to vote Democrat.

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Under the Illinois Juvenile Court Act, a minor who is under 13 at the time of the commission of a serious crime must be represented by counsel during the entire custodial interrogation. 705 ILCS 405/5-170(a). When the minor under 13 is in custody, Miranda warnings are not necessary. The law requires that the police provide the juvenile with a lawyer.

A juvenile who is one day shy of 13 gets an automatic lawyer, yet a juvenile who is just one day older must navigate the Miranda warnings in the same way as a sophisticated adult would be required to do.

Surprisingly, statistics show that 80% of suspects waive their Miranda rights. That would apply to the juveniles 13 and over. In one recent Illinois Supreme Court case, a police officer questioned a suspect in his home concerning a possible murder. The police officer who did the interrogation was not in uniform. He did have a revolver in plain sight.

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Cook County Judge William Gomolinski ruled that the language in the Illinois Constitution, Section 1, Article 13, “The right to trial by jury as heretofore enjoyed shall remain inviolate,” prevails and thus the law adopted for 6-person juries is unconstitutional. What the judge wrote in his opinion was that the right to a jury as it existed in 1970, with 12 jurors, cannot be changed without a constitutional amendment. That does not mean that the parties, should they agree, could not limit the jury size to a smaller number. However, litigants — according to Judge Gomolinski’s opinion — have a constitutional right to demand a 12-person jury in their cases.

The change to the Illinois jury system was proposed and passed during the last days of former Gov. Patrick J. Quinn’s second term in office. The law went into effect June 1, 2015.

In this particular case, a medical-malpractice case filed in Cook County on June 30, 2015, the defense counsel filed an appearance on behalf of his defendant clients, a doctor and a neurosurgery professional corporation, and requested a 12-person jury. A motion was filed for leave to file a 12-person jury demand with the court. The motion was assigned by the presiding judge in the law division to Judge Gomolinski. The opinion of Judge Gomolinski referred to the 1870 Illinois constitutional convention when a 12-person jury was a given right although the parties as now could waive their rights to a 12-person jury if they agreed on a smaller jury size.

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The beneficiaries of the Barbara B. Kaull Trust included the biological children of Mark James Kaull’s father, Mark Kaull, who died in 2010. Mary Kaull, acting as trustee of the Barbara B. Kaull Trust, petitioned the court for a ruling on whether Mark, the elder, was also the father of Ryan Donald Schrader. Mark James Kaull might be the brother of Ryan Donald Schrader. To determine whether they were in fact brothers, Mary Kaull asked the court for an order compelling Mark James Kaull to submit to a DNA test. Mark James Kaull refused and was held in contempt of court. Mark James Kaull argued that the Illinois Supreme Court Rule 215 as revised and amended in 1996 is unconstitutional under the U.S. and Illinois Constitutions.

Mark James claimed that the revised Rule 215 violated the prohibition on reasonable searches and seizures under the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, plus his right under Article 1, Section 6 of the Illinois Constitution to be free from unreasonable searches, seizures and invasions of privacy.

This case, which was set in Winnebago County, Ill., granted Mary’s request for the DNA testing. Mark appealed from that order which fined him $100 and a dollar a day for declining to obey.

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