Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01923/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01923-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-1923

SCOTT REEDER and the ILLINOIS POLICY INSTITUTE,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

MICHAEL J. MADIGAN, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Central District of Illinois.

No. 14-CV-3041 — Colin S. Bruce, Judge.

____________________

ARGUED NOVEMBER 10, 2014 — DECIDED MARCH 11, 2015

____________________

Before WOOD, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and HAMILTON,

Circuit Judges.

WOOD, Chief Judge. In March 2013, Scott Reeder received 

a letter from Rikeesha Phelon, the press secretary for Illinois 

Senate President John J. Cullerton. The letter bore bad news: 

it informed Reeder that his request for Senate media credentials as a writer for the Illinois Policy Institute (IPI) was denied because IPI was registered as a lobbying entity in Illinois. Phelon explained that Senate rules required this deciCase: 14-1923 Document: 29 Filed: 03/11/2015 Pages: 13
2 No. 14-1923

sion because the rules forbid credentials for anyone associated with a lobbying entity. Undaunted, Reeder tried again in 

January 2014 to obtain media credentials from the Illinois 

House of Representatives and Senate. His status had 

changed, he argued, because IPI was no longer registered as 

a lobbyist. That change was not enough to satisfy the Senate. 

It took the position that IPI was still required to register as a 

lobbyist given its retention of a lobbying firm that employed 

the same staff and office space as IPI itself. It thus once again 

denied Reeder’s application. The Illinois House responded 

in kind a few weeks later.

Reeder and IPI (to whom we refer collectively as Reeder)

responded with this lawsuit against Illinois House Speaker 

Michael Madigan and Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, along with their press secretaries. Invoking 42 U.S.C. 

§ 1983, Reeder contended that the defendants had violated 

his First Amendment right to freedom of the press, as well as 

his rights to due process and equal protection. The defendants moved to dismiss Reeder’s claims on the basis of absolute legislative immunity. The district court granted that motion, concluding that the denial of credentials to Reeder 

qualified as legislative activity and thus entitled the defendants to immunity. We agree with this conclusion and affirm 

the district court’s judgment.

I

The following account of the facts, which we have taken

from the complaint and its exhibits, is presented in the light 

most favorable to Reeder, as this case comes to us on a motion to dismiss. See CEnergy-Glenmore Wind Farm No. 1, LLC 

v. Town of Glenmore, 769 F.3d 485, 487 (7th Cir. 2014).

Case: 14-1923 Document: 29 Filed: 03/11/2015 Pages: 13
No. 14-1923 3

Reeder is an experienced reporter. Since 1988 he has 

worked for newspapers in Texas, Iowa, and Nevada. He 

served for ten years as statehouse bureau chief for an Illinois 

newspaper group. In 2009 he went to work for the Franklin 

Center for Government and Public Integrity, where he 

served as a reporter and editor. Finally, in 2012 Reeder began 

his job at the Illinois News Network (INN), which is part of 

IPI. At INN, Reeder says, he “writes his news commentary 

from a perspective that favors free markets and limited government.”

IPI was registered as a lobbyist in Illinois through 2013. 

At some point in late 2012 or early 2013, Reeder requested 

media credentials from both Houses of the Illinois General 

Assembly. The credentials he sought would allow him access 

to press boxes on the floor of each chamber. Access to this 

area, Reeder explains, confers considerable advantages for 

journalists: they have the use of seats and desks; they can 

take photographs from advantageous angles; they may use 

the services of pages to deliver requests to legislators on the 

floor; and they have a guaranteed seat on days when the 

public galleries are full. 

As we noted earlier, both Houses denied Reeder’s application. Phelon explained in her March 2013 letter that the 

Senate’s media guidelines incorporate Senate Rule 4-3(d), 

which disallows access to the floor of the Senate for any 

“person who is directly or indirectly interested in defeating 

or promoting any pending legislative measure, if required to 

be registered as a lobbyist.” The letter also reminded Reeder 

that the Senate’s media guidelines require credential applicants to operate independently of industries and institutions

and to refrain from lobbying. Phelon acknowledged that the 

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4 No. 14-1923

Illinois Lobbyist Registration Act, 25 ILCS 170/1 et seq., generally exempts newspaper employees from lobbyist registration requirements, but there is an exception for people who 

receive compensation “from some source other than the bona fide news medium for the purpose of influencing executive, legislative, or administrative action.” Id. 170/3(a)(2). 

These rules required the rejection of Reeder’s application for 

credentials. Reeder received similar news in a conversation 

with Steve Brown, who was press secretary to the Speaker of 

the Illinois House.

Reeder applied again for media credentials from the

House and Senate in January 2014. He explained to Brown 

and Phelon through his attorney that IPI was not going to be 

registering as an Illinois lobbyist in 2014. This meant (he asserted) that they could no longer deny him credentials based 

on IPI’s status as a lobbyist. Neither chamber was persuaded 

that the change made any difference. Eric Madiar, chief legal 

counsel and parliamentarian to President Cullerton, wrote 

Reeder to explain why his office was again rejecting Reeder’s 

request for credentials.

Madiar observed that the people who were once IPI lobbyists now lobbied for another entity, Illinois Policy Action. 

That group, Madiar said, was responsible for advancing IPI’s 

interests in Springfield. IPI and Illinois Policy Action shared 

offices in Chicago and Springfield, with the same phone 

numbers and the same employees listed for both. “In other 

words,” Madiar wrote, “Illinois Policy Action serves as the 

Institute’s lobbyist, and the Institute is Policy Action’s client.” 

Madiar concluded that Reeder was still ineligible for a media 

credential. Madiar also noted that the Illinois News Network, as part of IPI, was not “owned and operated indeCase: 14-1923 Document: 29 Filed: 03/11/2015 Pages: 13
No. 14-1923 5

pendently of any industry, institution, association, or lobbying organization” and thus IPI should have registered as an 

Illinois lobbyist for 2014, given its relationship with Illinois 

Policy Action. In light of all this, Madiar concluded, “it is difficult to fathom how you [Reeder] operate independently of 

the Institute per the Senate Media Guidelines.”

The following month Reeder’s attorney received a similar 

letter citing House rules and the Lobbyist Registration Act 

from the counsel to the Speaker of the Illinois House. The 

day after this letter arrived, Reeder filed his lawsuit. 

II

A

The sole issue in this appeal is whether Speaker Madigan, President Cullerton, and their aides are entitled to absolute legislative immunity from suit for their denials of press 

credentials to Reeder. The idea of legislative immunity arises 

from the Speech or Debate Clause of Article I of the Constitution, which states that with regard to members of Congress, “for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall 

not be questioned in any other Place.” The protections of this 

clause have long been held to extend beyond mere discussion or speechmaking on the legislative floor. See, e.g., Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168, 204 (1880) (“It would be a 

narrow view of the constitutional provision to limit it to 

words spoken in debate.”). Rather, the Clause’s protections 

apply to legislators’ actions that constitute “legitimate legislative activity.” Tenney v. Brandhove, 341 U.S. 367, 376 (1951). 

The Supreme Court has held that this category encompasses

acts that are

an integral part of the deliberative and comCase: 14-1923 Document: 29 Filed: 03/11/2015 Pages: 13
6 No. 14-1923

municative processes by which Members participate in committee and House proceedings 

with respect to the consideration and passage 

or rejection of proposed legislation or with respect to other matters which the Constitution 

places within the jurisdiction of either House.

Gravel v. United States, 408 U.S. 606, 625 (1972). The inquiry 

into the nature of legislative activity is a functional one. See 

Rateree v. Rockett, 852 F.2d 946, 950 (7th Cir. 1988).

Just as the Speech or Debate Clause extends beyond literal speech and debate, so too does it apply to others besides 

members of the United States Congress. Legislators at the 

state, regional, and municipal levels are also entitled to absolute immunity for their legislative activities. Bogan v. ScottHarris, 523 U.S. 44, 53–54 (1998). The same can be true for actors on the legislative stage who are not elected officials

themselves. The Supreme Court left little doubt about this in 

Gravel, where it stated that the “Clause applies not only to a 

Member but also to his aides insofar as the conduct of the 

latter would be a protected legislative act if performed by 

the Member himself.” 408 U.S. at 618. This represented a 

shift in emphasis from the Court’s cases only a few years earlier, when it observed that legislative immunity is “less absolute, although applicable, when applied to officers or employees of a legislative body, rather than to legislators themselves.” Dombrowski v. Eastland, 387 U.S. 82, 85 (1967) (per 

curiam); see also Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 506

(1969) (holding legislators immune from suit but not House 

sergeant at arms, doorkeeper, or clerk). Since Gravel, the 

Court has confirmed that legislative immunity applies to legislative committee staff in addition to legislators themselves. 

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No. 14-1923 7

See Eastland v. United States Servicemen’s Fund, 421 U.S. 491, 

507 (1975); Doe v. McMillan, 412 U.S. 306, 312–13 (1973).

B

These cases support the conclusion that the activity in 

question here—the decision whether to confer media credentials on an applicant—was legislative in nature, and integrally so. As the Supreme Court explained in Gravel, legislative 

immunity extends to actions that are “necessary to prevent 

indirect impairment of such deliberations.” 408 U.S. at 625 

(internal quotation marks omitted). The rules that the defendants invoked in their decision with respect to Reeder 

demonstrate that his exclusion from the press boxes on the 

floor of the Assembly is designed to avoid the impairment of

deliberations there. Illinois House Rule 30(d) says that no 

person “required to be registered as a lobbyist ... shall be allowed access to the floor of the House at any time during the 

session.” Illinois Senate Rule 4-3(d) says the same thing. The 

Illinois Lobbyist Registration Act exempts certain journalists 

from the requirement to register with the state as lobbyists, 

but not those working for publications “owned by or published by ... not-for-profit corporations engaged primarily in 

endeavors other than dissemination of news.” 25 ILCS 

170/3(a)(2).

These rules reflect a judgment on the part of the Illinois 

General Assembly that certain persons or entities engaged in 

reporting must register as lobbyists and work under the 

rules that apply to lobbyists, including the rule forbidding 

presence on the floor. The rules spell out why this prohibition exists: these people are “directly or indirectly interested 

in defeating or promoting any pending legislative measure.” 

It can easily be inferred from the Lobbyist Registration Act, 

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along with the House and Senate rules, that the legislature 

believes that the presence of lobbyists risks an impairment of 

deliberations. The policy therefore has as its basis an important legislative purpose. The IPI is plainly an advocacy 

organization, and even though it did not register as a lobbyist in 2014, both the House and Senate determined that it 

should have. It is hardly a stretch to characterize control of 

access to the legislative floor as a core legislative function.

Reeder’s primary argument to the contrary—that the action to deny him credentials was administrative in nature, 

not legislative—finds little support in the case law or in the 

slim record before us. Reeder’s conception of the scope of 

legislative immunity is too restrictive. He argues, for example, that denial of media credentials is unlike speaking, debating, voting on the legislative floor, or conducting a legislative investigation. That set of activities, he assumes, exhausts the possibilities for legislative activity, and so anything not within the set must be administrative. Yet the Supreme Court has never held that the Speech or Debate 

Clause is so limited. Although it has stated that the Clause 

does not confer immunity upon absolutely everything done 

in the legislature, it also has said that the Clause should receive “a practical rather than a strictly literal reading.” 

Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111, 124 (1979).

The Illinois legislature’s decision to exclude lobbyists and 

those associated with lobbying groups from its legislative 

floor was enacted to prevent interference with the same core 

legislative activities Reeder lists—voting, conferring, making 

speeches, and so on. These activities are all integral to the 

legislative endeavor. A contrary rule would make it nearly 

impossible for a legislature to function, as it would potentialCase: 14-1923 Document: 29 Filed: 03/11/2015 Pages: 13
No. 14-1923 9

ly subject legislators and their aides to liability for every 

floor-access decision they make. It is not surprising, therefore, that the First and District of Columbia Circuits agree 

with us. See Nat’l Ass’n of Soc. Workers v. Harwood, 69 F.3d 

622, 632 (1st Cir. 1995) (holding “it is beyond serious dispute” that denying press credentials based on need to keep 

lobbyists off House floor is legislative); Consumers Union of 

U.S., Inc. v. Periodical Correspondents’ Ass’n, 515 F.2d 1341 

(D.C. Cir. 1975).

Nor are we persuaded that Powell v. McCormack, on 

which Reeder relied extensively at oral argument, requires 

the opposite result. Briefly, Powell concerned the decision of 

the U.S. House of Representatives to disallow one of its 

members (Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.) from taking his seat. 

Powell sued several of his House colleagues as well as the 

doorkeeper, sergeant-at-arms, and clerk for barring him 

from the chamber. Relevant to our purposes, the defendants 

asserted that the Speech or Debate Clause provided them 

with immunity from Powell’s suit. The Supreme Court 

adopted a more nuanced rule. Although it held that the 

Clause required that legislators be free from the burden of 

defending themselves, it did not similarly protect the specified House employees. See Powell, 395 U.S. at 504–06.

Yet the Court in Powell explicitly declined to consider the 

question whether the decision to exclude Powell was legislative in nature. Id. at 501–02. Moreover, since Powell the Court 

has definitively rejected the notion that legislative aides (as 

opposed to staff such as the doorkeeper or sergeant-at-arms)

are not entitled to the same degree of immunity as legislators 

themselves in cases after Powell. See, e.g., Gravel, 408 U.S. at 

616–17 (noting that “the day-to-day work of such aides is so 

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10 No. 14-1923

critical to the Members’ performance that they must be treated as the latter’s alter egos; and that if they are not so recognized, the central role of the Speech or Debate Clause ... will 

inevitably be diminished and frustrated”). Gravel compels us 

to find that the immunity that protects Cullerton and Madigan from suit in this case extends to Phelon and Brown, their 

press secretaries. It would be a mistake to read too much into Powell in any event, because it raised the exceedingly unusual situation of a duly elected member of Congress who 

was barred from taking his own seat. Reeder’s access to the 

floors of the Illinois Senate and House raises a more mundane matter that was always subject to the approval of the 

legislature.

In a less ambitious vein, Reeder also contends that the actions under review were not legislative because they represented mere enforcement of a rule, not its promulgation—a 

distinction that he believes the Supreme Court adopted in 

Supreme Court of Va. v. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., 446 U.S. 

719 (1980). But the Court in Supreme Court of Virginia made 

no such pronouncement. The case dealt in part with the Virginia Supreme Court’s authority to initiate disciplinary proceedings against attorneys for alleged violations of rules the 

court itself promulgated. The promulgation of rules is entitled to legislative immunity, the U.S. Supreme Court noted, 

but the Virginia Supreme Court’s power to enforce those 

rules via disciplinary proceedings was prosecutorial in nature. Prosecutors, the Court continued, “enjoy absolute immunity from damages liability” but not from section 1983 

injunctive suits, because “they are the state officers who are 

threatening to enforce and who are enforcing the law.” Id. at 

736. Thus the Virginia Supreme Court, like any prosecutor, 

did not enjoy absolute legislative immunity for its “enforceCase: 14-1923 Document: 29 Filed: 03/11/2015 Pages: 13
No. 14-1923 11

ment capacities.” Id.

Reeder’s argument falls flat because it does not take into 

account the raison d’être of the Court’s decision in Supreme 

Court of Virginia. The defendants’ decision to deny him credentials was nothing like a prosecution. It did not impose 

any kind of liability on him, nor did it deprive him of a license or permit. We agree with the First Circuit’s conclusion

that when “a legislative body adopts a rule ... that bears upon its conduct of frankly legislative business, we think that 

the doctrine of legislative immunity must protect legislators 

and legislative aides who do no more than carry out the will 

of the body by enforcing the rule as a part of their official 

duties.” Harwood, 69 F.3d at 631. Although it does not matter 

in light of our conclusion, the fact is that Reeder appears to 

be challenging both the promulgation and enforcement of 

the rules here. Even he appears to concede that his argument 

is meritless as applied to the promulgation of the rules. 

Reeder also contends that federal legislators are entitled 

to a broader legislative privilege than their state counterparts have. In quoting Supreme Court of Virginia for this point, 

however, Reeder omits that the Supreme Court said this was 

true only “in criminal actions.” 446 U.S. at 733. Admittedly, 

we skipped over that qualification in Bagley v. Blagojevich, 

646 F.3d 378, 396–97 (7th Cir. 2011), although it was not dispositive in that case, nor is it in this one. There is no reason 

to find that legislators such as Speaker Madigan and President Cullerton along with their aides are entitled to lesser 

protection than their peers in Washington. See Bogan, 

523 U.S. at 53–54 (extending the protections of legislative 

immunity to municipal legislators).

Several final matters require our attention. First, Reeder 

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12 No. 14-1923

makes a late attempt in his reply brief to raise a factual issue. 

He contends that the defendants have not adequately shown 

that media credentials actually permit journalists to affect 

floor proceedings in the General Assembly. Had the case 

gone further, Reeder argues, he could have presented evidence that the press boxes in Springfield have a separate entrance and “high partitions” between journalists and the rest 

of the floor, and so journalists using them have no special 

access to legislators. New contentions in a reply brief are disfavored, but Reeder’s argument suffers from more fundamental problems. It requires far more of defendants than the 

law requires in order to be entitled to immunity. The Supreme Court has never held that those claiming legislative 

immunity must substantiate the rationales for their legislative actions with evidence. And it is an odd argument for 

Reeder to press, since if accepted, it would suggest that access he wants is of little or no value. We refrain from saying 

any more about it, since it was raised too late. 

Second, Reeder insists that our approval of the district 

court’s dismissal of his case will provide cover for the legislature to reject other credential requests for invidious reasons, such as the race or sex of the applicant. Yet he concedes 

that these risks exist whenever legislative immunity is invoked. He does not argue that any such thing happened 

here, nor does he explain why we should speculate about the 

proper way to resolve a hypothetical conflict between two 

different constitutional commands. We can safely save that 

issue for another day.

Finally, Reeder has not argued that Ex parte Young, 209 

U.S. 123 (1908), overcomes the defendants’ legislative immunity in this case. This omission is striking because the deCase: 14-1923 Document: 29 Filed: 03/11/2015 Pages: 13
No. 14-1923 13

fendants asserted in their brief that they are not responsible 

for the enforcement of the Lobbyist Registration Act, which 

is the source of the rules both Houses follow, and thus that 

no injunction under Young would be proper. Brief of Defendants-Appellees at 14–15 n.3. Reeder made no response to this 

argument in his reply brief, and so we need say no more 

about it.

III

The defendants’ decisions to deny press credentials to 

Reeder were inseparable from their core legislative activities. 

They were intimately related to the shared goal of the Illinois 

Senate and House to regulate access to the floors of the state 

House and Senate. The defendants are thus entitled to absolute legislative immunity from suit in this case, and we 

AFFIRM the judgment of the district court to this effect.

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