MAPS RULING

4/10/25

Illinois House Republicans waited too long to file a lawsuit challenging legislative maps drawn in 2021, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

As a result, the Democrat-majority court will not hear the case.

House Republican Leader Tony McCombie, along with a group of individual voters, asked the court to reject the current legislative map for its partisan bias and lack of compactness.  House Republicans wanted the court to appoint a special master redraw the districts.

They alleged the voting district maps are not “compact,” a requirement of the state constitution, which has led to allegations of gerrymandering in favor of Democrats.

The plaintiffs argued court cases in other states and at the federal level required them to gather data from multiple election cycles with the maps in place to show a pattern that proves the maps aren’t compact and were drawn for partisan benefit.  But the court said McCombie’s caucus waited too long to make their case.

“Plaintiffs could have brought this argument years ago,” the court wrote in a short two-page opinion.  “Their claim that waiting multiple election cycles is necessary to reveal the effects of redistricting is unpersuasive.”

Republican Justice David Overstreet was the lone dissenting justice.

The court’s ruling follows a similar case in 2012 that challenged the compactness of the 2011 maps.  In that case, the court dismissed the challenge as untimely even though it was filed just eight months after the maps were enacted.

A lawsuit from multiple parties challenging the map was dismissed in 2021 by a federal three-judge panel, which rejected arguments that the map diluted the voting strength of racial minorities.

Republican leaders said they will review possible additional legal options in this case, but their next steps toward enacting independent mapping will be outside of court.  Representative Ryan Spain, said he wants to try another petition drive to force a ballot referendum on the issue.

Republican lawmakers also want to pursue judicial ethics reform, arguing Democrat Justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary K. O’Brien should have recused themselves from the case after receiving campaign contributions in 2022 from a political action committee run by Harmon, who intervened as a defendant in the case.