is the court this is an attorney general carson griffis on behalf of the people in the midst of the mortgage foreclosure crisis the general assembly established two programs funded by fee and residential mortgage foreclosure actions the st the foreclosure prevention program provides counseling to prospective home buyers and homeowners and how to avoid foreclosure and the nd the abandoned property fund provides grants to municipalities to maintain and secure properties left abandoned during the foreclosure process the circuit court in this case struck down the fee and both of those programs largely based on its conclusion that they were too attenuated from port operations and maintenance under this court's decision to crocker but the circuit court overlooked the rational connection between those programs and the general assembly's goal of reducing circuit court case loads this court therefore should reverse the circuit court's march nd two thousand and twenty order and remand with instructions to enter summary judgment for defend there are four constitutional issues in this case i would like to address them in two groups of two beginning with plaintiff's free access and due process clause challenges which are best addressed together because the free access clause qualifies the general due process standard by imposing the additional requirement that court filing fees be reasonably related to court operations or maintenance and that connection is he exists here because again both programs were designed to reduce circuit court case loads the foreclosure prevention program was designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure and fewer foreclosures means fewer foreclosure actions that circuit courts would have to preside over and the  property fund again was designed to mitigate the negative effects of the blight caused by abandoned properties that were increasing during the foreclosure crisis which lead to problems like crime increased risk of accident and even more foreclosures all of which fuel additional litigation and so by hope by trying to remedy those negative effects the general assembly could have reasonably concluded that sort of courts would have diminish dockets again the circuit court here relied on crocker but crocker does not compel a contrary result crocker involved a fee on dissolution of marriage actions that was used to fund a program for domestic violence victims and this court really expressed two concerns with that system in krakow neither of which are present here the st concern was that the only connection the court could draw between the domestic violence shelters in crocker and the court system was that the moral and emotional support provided by the shelters to victims of domestic violence might make them more efficient users of the judicial system if they became involved in the judicial system in some future litigation but there's more direct connections here but with the court  system unlike the mere moral and emotional support provided by the shelters and crocker the foreclosure prevention program provides a type of legal education in a in a sense it informs homeowners about the foreclosure process how to avoid it and in that sense it much more closely resembles the type of legal education that this court held could be validly enacted through a filing fee and its decision in ali as for the abandoned property fund that not like the domestic violence programs and crocker simply provide support for individuals general wellbeing which then might have some tangential benefit to the court system if they're involved with the court system down the line again it was designed reduce negative effects of property abandonment all of which fuel litigation and in that sense they much more closely resemble the neutral site custody exchange centers that the appellate court upheld in life and smith so where the appellate court stressed that the general assembly could have reasonably concluded that conflicts during child custody exchanges with fuel additional education and those usual side exchange centers would reduce those conflicts the same situation we have here where reducing the social frictions caused by blight in abandoned properties would reduce the likelihood of future litigation the other concern that this court had crocker was that there was no connection between dissolution of marriage actions which again were the type of actions on which that few was imposed and domestic violence unlike this case though there's a strong connection between mortgage foreclosures and the problems that the foreclosure prevention program and abandoned property fund were designed to address so to both of those points crocker is distinguish not control circuit courts conclusion here for their part plaintiffs take much of their claim on the argument that some sort of some form of heightened scrutiny or even strict scrutiny is warranted here but that's incorrect for three reasons first interpret in the free access clause this court has emphasized that a court filing fee need only be reasonable and it is also deferred to the legislature's judgment as to whether a fee is desirable both of those standards very closely resemble the rational basis test and in fact every appellate court decision to have considered the appropriate level of scrutiny to be applied to a court filing fee and a free access clause has used the rational basis test second the rational basis this court has used the rational basis test in analyzing the constitutionality of court found that these are the due process clause and as noted the free access clause in due process clause or very similar one really just qualifies the other and so because of the similarity of those analyses this court should apply consistent tests across both clauses and rd generally speaking the rational basis test is the default standard when reviewing the constitutionality of any statute  that does not impact fundamental rights or suspect class and here we don't have either of those circumstances there is no contention the plaintiffs are members of a suspect class and although plaintiffs have argued that their fundamental right to access the court has been impacted by the fee this court has made clear several times that there is no constitutional right to feel free litigation and so for that reason i discreetly is not appropriate plaintiffs cite crocker and boynton for the proposition that heightened scrutiny is warranted but crocker makes no mention of heightened scrutiny and in fact stressed that there is no constitutional right to feel free of litigation and also boyington was not a free access clause case it was a due process challenge to a marriage license fee out of court filing fee and the important factor there was that this court stressed that the marriage licenses imposed an impediment on an individual's fundamental rights to  marry again we don't have a fundamental right at issue here because there is no fundamental right to free litigation so because rational basis is the appropriate test to apply as the free access clause a due process clause and there is a rational connection between the two addressed together because if a statute satisfies the uniform because it necessarily satisfies the more lenient equal protection clause so under the uniform because a tax classification will be upheld if it is based on a real and substantial difference between the parties tax those not taxed and there is some rational relationship for the legislature or between the legislatures tax classification and public policy both of those elements are easily met here there is a real substantial difference between foreclosure plaintiffs and other plaintiffs foreclosure plaintiffs initiate litigation that causes abandoned properties and other societal problems that other plaintiffs litigation does not and it's reasonable for the legislat decide that only foreclosure plaintiffs should bear a modest portion of the cost of those problems in making its class tax cuts for cation it's very similar to this court's holding in aaron gold which involved a tax on tobacco distributors to pay for nursing facilities or discords conclusion northern illinois home builders association which was a fee on new property developments that was not imposed on existing property  the circuit court for its part as to the uniformity and equal protection clause says didn't offer much in the way of a meaningful analysis of that it simply recited the elements of the uniformity task and said that the foreclosure feeded not meet that test and plaintiffs in their briefing have focused on an irrelevant distinction in arguing that the uniformity clause is violated rather than focusing on the difference between the parties taxed foreclosure plaintiffs and the part not tax other plaintiffs they focus on how the funds that were collected from the filers were then ultimately used throughout the state saying that too much money went to chicago or cook county  but again the uniformity clause looks at the distinction between the parties taxed and not taxed not how the funds collected are ultimately spent and as this court has made clear recently in marks under the uniformity clause even if plaintiffs or their corners no i don't believe it's used only on foreclosed properties you can use for abandoned residential property which is defined in illinois housing development authorities regulations but i would note that  places abroad a facial challenge in this case so the fact that it might be used on some property that wasn't in the foreclosure process isn't enough to sustain their burden here they'd have to show that was essentially never used for a property that was left abandoned during the foreclosure process or supports did increase during the foreclosure crisis so there is a causal connection between for closure litigation and an increase in event and properties and then trying to reduce that that sort of feedback loop of foreclosures bennett properties and then even more foreclosures that was seen earlier during the foreclosure crisis so just turning back briefly to the uniformity clause even if claims of geographic distinction even about how the funds were spent was relevant this court affords the legislature broad deference to the informally cause and so just argument that essentially more money should have been done to different parts of the state would not be a question that this court would wa into under the uniformity clause it would defer to the legislatures decision which is reasonable to apportion a significant amount of that funds to the most populous areas of the state so unless this court has any other questions for those reasons and the reasons stated in our brief we as university circuit courts march nd two thousand and twenty order right now with instructions to enter summary judgment for defen may please the court my name is paul feynman i am going to sustain state's attorney representing iris martinez the clerk of the court of circuit court of cook county let me begin by saying that we agree with and we joined the attorney general's arguments that the statutes  constitutional we know that if a case can be decided on nine constitutional grounds the court should do so before considering the constitutional issues here this court has an alternative the court does not have to reach those issues in this case the voluntary payment doctrine bars the plaintiff's claims the voluntary payment doctrine holds that money that's voluntarily paid under a claim of right to that payment and with knowledge of the facts cannot be recovered on the grounds that the payment was illegal the common law rights and remedies remain in full force in the state unless expressly repealed by the legislature or modified by the court's decision this doctrine is a common law rule of general application there are exceptions to show that a payment was not paid voluntarily for instance do darius compulsion fraud or mistake of fact here the circuit court incorrectly found that the duress exception applied and that the pla had shown that they were coerced into paying the filing fee each of the cases brought forth by the circuit court and the plaintiffs in this case involve facts specific circumstances where the payee held actual or threatened power over the pay or they are clearly distinguishable from this case in that manner the st case that's that's most important to discuss is midwest medical versus brown in that case the st district court found that directs did exist and importantly the st district court said that the reason that they found arrest is because the plaintiffs would have lost access to the courts however it wasn't just access to the course that was at issue it was access to the courts to challenge an order there was already entered against them plaintiffs said already filed a fee the filed a case they'd already argue their case it had an order entered against them and they were seeking to vacate the order or move to reconsider the order the court in midwest enunciated test for darius the court said that it had some actual or threatened power wielded over the pay or where some immediate relief was necessary there are several other cases cited  chords talk about the dress test norton vs city of chicago illinois class and ghetto vs city of chicago all of those cases different are different from this case in those cases there was some coercion or threaten default judgment for instance in norton which would cause the businesses that hand to fail and the courts in those cases found business coersion here  court that if the clerk had told him that the fee wasn't required he would have preferred not to pay it he said that he was anxious to file his his mortgage foreclosure he knew that the fee was required but he didn't take any any  steps to avoid paying the fee he didn't seek a fee waiver he didn't write under protest on his check he just says that he would prefer not to have paid that's not enough for two rats though the durans standard that's stated finally the most controlling case in this situation is mcintosh versus walgreens in this in that case the court this court found that the the legislature had not expressly limited the voluntary payment doctrine and that in the consumer product and so it was if the legislature has it had an express a limited it the plaintiff had to prove some coercion some in some involuntary payment this court again enunciated the standard common law rights a member has renewed full force in the state of illinois and unless there's some legislative limiting or unless the courts have had many decisions then the voluntary payment doctors still applies because a voluntary payment doctrine bars plaintiff walker's claims it also bars the plaintiff class claims so therefore clerk martina's respectfully request this court to reverse the circuit court's order and remain the case back to the circuit court for entry of summary judgment for defendants unless there's any questions thank you very much for your consideration good morning your honour's and may it please the court i am daniel craig represent the plaintiffs reuben walker and stephen diamond and all of those individuals who paid mandatory mortgage foreclosure fees in illinois defense i think it important to note that this defense is maintained only by iris martinez circuit court clerk of cook county the people the state of illinois in that the circuit court clerk  will county do not maintain this defense and they don't argue this distance by my argument today i will provide the plaintiff position that a voluntary payment defense makes little sense in the scenario of a mandatory court filing fee where payment of a fee is required before the plainest can attempt to protect their property rights in a mortgage foreclosure action but i am not alone in this belief the people of the state of illinois also maintain that claiming of voluntary payment defends regarding mandatory filing fees makes little service as those fees are mandatory and must be paid for access to the courts during oral argument in the trial court the trial court specifically asked the defendants if they were maintaining the voluntary defense voluntary payments defense the people of the state of illinois denied they were maintaining the defense consistent with this position the people of the state of illinois did not assert a voluntary payments defense an abbreviation of the court that's why you see only cook county coming up here in arguing that defense abolished jury payments defense applies when money is paid by alan terrell under a claim of right to payment with full out of all facts and circumstances by the person making the payment under this defense the pay your cannot recover back the payment on the grounds that the claim was illegal however the voluntary payments defenses in applicable where the person making the payment doesn't h knowledge of the facts and circumstances and or where the payer is under duress or compulsion meaning he or she did not pay voluntarily here plaintiffs filed mortgage foreclosure actions after and ten that had add on themes of fifty dollars two one hundred and fifty dollars or five hundred dollars depending upon how many mortgage foreclosure actions you filed that year but unfortunately the plaintiff lacked full knowledge of the facts surrounding the impermissible feet clearly plaintiffs understood that they have to pay a fee we understand but the court fee they pay was a single scheduled see and not itemize which is much different than all of the cases which the cook county refers to reuben walker testified that he was charged a single filing fee amount of four hundred and seventy six dollars to access the courts and his receipt did not show any breakdown of those filing fees it was a single flat feet so when you when the action was filed in the number of actions  doesn't break it down that fifty dollars was added to the save the neighborhood program that's not related it's just it was in will county and it will county filing fee for such and such number of foreclosures for seventy six dollars the other one's head a different number on them yes just a total total number just one total number not a breakdown of the car customers were given specific itemize i'm a zation zaw all of the taxes which they had to pay it was broken down they were in possession of receipts which showed those charges and taxes and so they were found to that the shopper made a voluntary payment because her receipt indicated the value of the item purchase the value of the coupons redeemed and more importantly the amount of the check tax charge therefore the planet did not have a foreclosure i went to the court the court shows the mandatory filing fee and i paid the mandatory filing fee because i was the factual not important to the region walker case but it his son in law was mortgaging and adding mortgages to the improperly to the property that he own group and walker own so he time was of the yes and for him to get into court on his particular circumstance as it is on most mortgage foreclosures you don't want that particular property not to have someone in it and someone who cares about that property but there was no further you know he didn't hire somebody to go down and say can they what makes up that four hundred and seventy six dollars is there a fifty dollars fee and let me put in five thousand dollars with the legal work figuring out if that fifty dollars fee is valid or not he knew it was a mandatory filing fee in the pay the mandatory filing fee and here unlike with a friend and was in ski walkers direct testimony evidence a complete lack of knowledge as to the impermissible fee and to your point the knowledge has to be there at the time of payment of the fee if you come into knowledge after that that doesn't count as a voluntary defense voluntary payment defense and pursuant to the requirements of a voluntary payment defense plaintiff must have knowledge at the time again in order to protest because plaintiffs who paid mandatory a lack of full knowledge exception to the biology repayments offense the mandatory nature of the filing fee necessary to access the courts to protect their property rights places the plaintiffs under compulsion and order  dresses define under the voluntary defense case law is occurring when the taxpayers really don't have a choice here the plaintiffs had no option but to pay the court b to protect their property rights  could not access the court or protect their rights without st making that required payment the midwest case is instructive the midwest medical records case there the midwest medical plaintiff challenge the clerk of courts fifty a sixty dollars fee which was required to be paid to reconsider interlocutory orders and the failure to pay that court fee you would have prevented the plaintiff from the ability to challenge in or lock the doors i don't see a real difference between stopping someone from even filing a case rather then a situation where someone is inside a case and now wants to further challenge an interlocutory fee this one  the filing fee situation it leads to the same result you don't have a cause of action and you have to pay these fees and so there's really no distinction between the midwest case and our case clearly the ri protect property through access to the courts is a fundamental article one constitutional right provided to all people of the state of illinois there's no reason to devote other than to pay the mandatory fee in order to gain access i think cook county on persuasively argues that actions of the court is not a constitutionally protected right in mortgage foreclosure cases further they argue that reuben walker should have performed a useless action of saying to the court i'm not an indigent but i want the indigent waiver of the filing a similar waiver type argument was attempted in the case of yuri vs dominic finer food there the court reasoned that the plaintiff did not have to attempt to buy the certain feminine hygiene product a tampon without paying the tax in order to prove involuntary payment this court noted that to do so was useless as no store would waive a tax they must tax the goods here no court would waive the mandatory filing fee for indigent litigants no notwithstanding could counties argument to the contrary the law does not require plain to perform useless acts to prove involuntary payment again the ruling of the theory versus dominic's under food case finally there is no reasonable alternative for reuben walker and all plaintiffs other than to pay the mortgage fee to our allowed access to the courts find us cannot recover protect their property without access the duress necessary to establish payments under compulsion has been expanded in recent years some examples of the expanded definition of duress and compulsion raintree homes where a developer was paying a impact fee t a village that paid for quite a while and even knew the fee and knew that in fact that fee was being placed upon it finally the developer decided that it was going to challenge thieves the villagers said well you've been paying this for years you don't have an ability to challenges it was a voluntary payment you paid it with knowledge of the fee and the court said that absolutely not it's a business compulsion this particular business needed to make the improvements to those properties they needed to pay the impact fees to stay in business there was a business compulsion that was to rest voluntary payments defense does not apply so to in the ghetto versus city chicago case claim of voluntary payments defense was made the court said no this had to deal with telephone chargers the telephone is a necessity for businesses therefore there was a compulsion for them to pay to speak even though those particular libya's new the fee new the taxes on the city the court said no this is not bomb material payment you were under a compulsion your business would have gone out of business if you didn't pay that fee and so too in the in the geary versus dominic fire foods again the female hygiene products case the court said that is a necessity for women we are not going to require them to pray to pay under protest that particular tax on that particular product so if the business compulsions or necessities cited in those cases can defeat voluntary payments defense then the constitutionally protected fundamental access to the courts which is without question a necessity clearly defeats the to challenge the statute that taxes mortgage foreclosure a litigant only to fund general welfare program called save our neighborhoods program these general welfare programs include housing counseling and clean up and repair of maintenance of privately owned residential properties the defendants claim these statutes are our statutes are constitutional because there's a conceivable relationship friendly this court struck down as unconstitutional a five dollars filing fee charged in dissolution of marriage cases to fund a mess to violence programs this court reasoned that dissolution of marriage  should not be required to pay mandatory fees to fund general walther programs that neither directly relate to their litigation nor to the operation of the court system that's an important that this court put it that they neither directly related to their litigation nor directly related to the operation of the court system in iraq or the defendants argued that the private counseling received from domestic violence programs would allow potential litigants to use the court system more efficiently in much the same way that a county law library improved the administration of justice but this court was not persuaded  found that the asserted relationship between the fi in the court system although conceivable was simply too remote to save the taps from a constitutional shortcoming of the attorney general says unlike crocker here litigants in the court system can be helped with court mediations and counsel this other counseling is complete in separate from the court system in fact as we will see in a minute in effect and when i continue on is that this counseling is not legally related it excludes legal relationships legal relation counseling so you can't have someone in pro bono it's not setting up a pro bono  counseling system it's not setting up any type of counseling system or legal services are provided so what you're doing is you're setting up a community counseling centers where anybody can go to them they don't have been related to the court anyone can go to them it's a nice idea but it's not related to the court system and that's what crocker said it's got to be related to the court system this court has to be able to oversee that particular program and i think that's the key difference saying is is that in order what crocker said was that it had to be related to the courts and in that respect the courts have to have some control over these funds the court can't just say listen we're going to tax all of our litigants and we're just going to give it to social programs without us having to worry about what happens to and where it goes that's improper think crocker is making that distinction crocker says it has to be related to court operations and and the cases that have found that it was constitutional or not a free access cost violation all head court oversight some court oversight and they were more directly related you know in cracker you could have made it easy argument that  with with the dissolution of marriage that's you know there's a lot of people who who are divorced because of domestic abuse so there is in fact a relationship there you can make that relationship and in having domestic abuse shelters it will cut down on crime as as counsel said about what mortgage foreclosures do they cut down on crime if we can stop mortgage foreclosures from happening you can say that about any program if again you set up a domestic abuse shelter for women or others that particular shelter will cut down on crime and that helps unburden the the criminal court so it's just too remote and that's really the test of property it's too remote but crocker states is that a certain class of plaintiffs should not have to pay for general welfare programs that relate neither to the litigation or the court system again here we have programs that relate directly to foreclosure litigation and the problems that it causes and also the court system by trying to reduce circuit court case loads council also mentioned that the fact that this court or the judicial system isn't involved in ministering the  funds that's not relevant for purposes of the free access clause in ali this court upheld a fee that was used for county law libraries and in cook county those county law libraries were administered by the county board and more specifically a library commission appointed by the county board there was no real oversight by the judicial system there similarly the appellate court in like smith silk and wang are all upheld programs that were run by nonprofit organizations  similar to the foreclosure prevention program here where funds are essentially grants to nonprofits to provide for the organizations and i also know that even in crocker the domestic violence programs in that case were administered by the department of public aid and in striking down the field there this court didn't really express any concern about the executive branch's involvement with that program so so there's no real issue with the fact that the foreclosure prevention program and the abandoned property fund weren't administered to courts in order to say yes that's the focus under crocker but i think also in a case like this where there is a fee imposed on a certain class of litigants the concerning crocker that there must be a relationship between those types of cases on which a fee is imposed and the problems that the program were designed to address also comes into play which we have here where again foreclosure actions cause certain societal problems and the problems attenuated here again we have problems created by the morgan mortgage foreclosure crisis that we're flooding the circuit courts with foreclosure cases and we're also creating other types of litigation criminal prosecutions increased likelihood of tort actions and so it's reasonable for the legislature to decide that foreclosure plaintiffs should bear some modest portion of the cost of dealing with those finally the council pointed out that in crocker there was maybe a connection between dissolution of marriage and domestic violence but there was no connection in the sense that dissolution of marriage actions did not cause domestic violence you know individuals filing for divorce don't then lead to domestic violence necessarily that's not an apparent connection but here we have strong causal connections between foreclosure litigation and more foreclosure actions which we saw during the foreclosure crisis  atory to get access to court that's not challenged that is true however a mandatory fee is not per se directs there are a variety of cases in which courts find that smith versus miller case where money is paid under severe statutory penalties for it or for disastrous effect to business that stress so i think it's important to distinguish the facts of this case to those cases also with regard to counsel statement about the attorney general the will county clerk of court did join in the voluntary payment doctrine and in the trial court  they expressed support for that doctor and upon questioning by judge in or since they did not join our brief and they did not file a brief on it here but they did express support for you in court with regard to the mandatory issue  i think that's one of them that's very explicit when you look at it there's a tax provision that the legislature has a mandate thirty five i'll see has two hundred slash twenty three dash five the legislature limited the voluntary payment doctrine in that case for real estate taxes and they said that any taxes that were paid were deemed paid under protest so the legislature does have the ability to limit the voluntary payment doctrine and things that i think that are different from this case if he's assessed in on some council did say that they feel is four hundred and seventy six dollars in this case and i believe that is in the record finally with regard to lack of knowledge you know counsel approach address that did his client have an opportunity to inquire about the charges yes his attorney is the is the party that filed that paid the fee and filed the case and he hired an attorney for the purpose of filing his case his attorney could have inquired about the charges he could have sought a fee waiver the courtroom doors were not barred she won him he he had access to the courts and this case again is different than the midwest medical case in that case there was a sort of damocles there