Capitol News Illinois reported that two newly-elected justices of the Supreme Court of Illinois,  Justices Mary Kay O’Brien and Elizabeth Rochford, refused to recuse themselves from a case challenging the state’s recently passed ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Lawmakers in Illinois recently passed the said ban on more than 170 types of semi-automatic firearms and high-capacity magazines during a session in January. Gov. JB Pritzker signed it into law within hours of its passage, making Illinois the ninth state to enact such a ban. As of the moment, there are currently two challenges to the law pending in state courts.

In relation to this, the plaintiffs of the said case filed a motion asking the two justices to recuse themselves from the challenging matter. This is in relation to the notion that both justices received significant campaign donations amounting to $500,000 each, from Gov. JB Pritzker and House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, who are both named defendants in the case and another $500,000 each from Jay Robert Pritzker Revocable Trust. The motion also noted that both received endorsements from two prominent gun control lobby organizations namely, the Gun Violence Prevention PAC and Giffords PAC.

The motion asserts, “the significance of the campaign contributions cannot be understated as often in politics, cash follows cash, especially when one considers the stake the Governor and/or Speaker were taking in the race(s), Thirty-Nine percent (39%) of Justice O’Brien’s cash came from litigation stakeholders. Thirty-Six percent (36%) of Justice Rochford’s cash came from litigation stakeholders.”

Following the said allegations, the plaintiffs’ attorneys cited portions of the Illinois Code of Judicial Conduct, which states in part that, “A judge shall be disqualified in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” That includes matters wherein the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning the parties, attorneys, or issues involved, as well as cases in which the judge has made public statements outside of a court proceeding that appear to commit the judge to a particular decision. In the state of Illinois where the decision to recuse oneself from a case rests solely with the justices themselves, both of the said justices refused to do so.

In response, Justices O’Brien and Rochford stated that the plaintiffs did not point to any specific pledges or statements that would indicate a bias in the case. They both also argued that the contributions they had received were within the state’s campaign finance limits for judicial elections. Judge Rochford and Obrien cited former Justice Lloyd Karmeier’s case, who was also requested to recuse himself from hearing an appeal in a $10 billion class action lawsuit against tobacco giant Philip Morris, in which Justice Rochford quoted Karmerier that time, “The claim that a judge may not hear a case because a party may have some association with a public interest group or political party that did support or may have supported the judge’s candidacy has no basis in the law, would be unworkable and is contrary to the very notion of an elected judiciary.”

Justice O’Brien also quoted Karmeier as well, stating, “Litigants must not be permitted to create the grounds for recusal by criticizing the judge or casting sinister aspersions, nor may a party engage in ‘judge-shopping’ by manufacturing bias or prejudice that previously did not exist.”

In relation to this, the court as a whole issued an unsigned order declining to disqualify both of the justices.

 

Source: Capitol News Illinois