Court Opinion

ID: 9884566
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:02:02.610581+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:39.566031
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE ZWICK, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. As the majority has noted, the defendants readily concede that passage of this act was done in violation of article IV section (d), of our state constitution. Notwithstanding this concession, it is the majority’s view that the enrolled bill doctrine is an absolute bar to judicial examination of the clearly unethical and perhaps even fraudulent conduct of the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate in certifying that this legislation was read on three separate days. It is on this single but critically important point that I depart from my colleagues. The three-readings requirement for enacting legislation found in article IV section 8(d), serves two distinct functions. The first is procedural. By providing that each bill be read “by title” on the floor of each house, it assures that every member of the General Assembly receives fair notice of pending legislation. In furtherance of this purpose, section 8(d) also provides that new legislation must be “reproduced and placed on the desk of each member before final passage.” 111. Const. 1970, art. IV § 8(d). After a bill is passed, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate certify that all the procedural requirements necessary for its passage into law have been faithfully met. When legislation is so certified, the enrolled bill doctrine, as the majority notes, precludes a court challenge on the basis that the proper notices had not been given. Thus, the legislation becomes procedurally unassailable. The three-readings requirement also serves a substantive purpose, a function that has never before been put at issue on appeal. By requiring that every bill be read publicly “on three different days,” section 8(d) creates a specific period of time during which members of the General Assembly, the media, and the public have the opportunity to inform themselves about pending changes in Illinois law. The three-day requirement also presents a window of opportunity when our citizenry can contact their representatives to urge a vote in favor of or against pending legislation. In this case, where the bill was read only once on the same day that it was passed, even the press, armed with satellite uplinks and high-speed internet connections, could not have disseminated the potential effects of this law before it was set for vote. The majority cites several cases in which our supreme court has invoked the enrolled bill doctrine to uphold legislation against constitutional attack similar to that now made by the plaintiffs. See People v. Dunigan, 165 Ill. 2d 235, 650 N.E.2d 1026 (1995); Cutinello v. Whitely, 161 Ill. 2d 409, 641 N.E.2d 360 (1994); Geja’s Cafe v. Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority, 153 Ill. 2d 239, 606 N.E.2d 1212 (1992); Fuehrmeyer v. City of Chicago, 57 Ill. 2d 193, 311 N.E.2d 116 (1974). These cases are distinguishable. Except in Geja’s Cafe, the defendants in each of these cases argued that the passage of the Act complied with the three-readings requirement. Thus, in all of those cases but Geja’s Cafe, the court was presented with a good-faith argument that the particular act in question had been read in conformity with the constitutional mandate. Because those cases presented a genuine issue as to whether the procedural requirements had been met, the court elected, out of concern for separation of powers, to reasonably rely upon the certifications of the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate. In stark contrast to those cases, the defendants here concede that the Act was not read three times on three different days, as constitutionally mandated by article IX section 8(d). Geja’s Cafe is similar to the instant case in that the defendants there acknowledged that the act had not been properly read in accordance with article IX section 8(d). In that case, however, the supreme court noted that the enrolled bill doctrine had been designed to preclude invalidation of legislation on “ ‘some procedural error or technicality.’ ” Geja’s Cafe, 153 Ill. 2d at 259, quoting 6 Record of Proceedings, Sixth Illinois Constitutional Convention 1386-87. Unlike the facts at issue in Geja’s Cafe, where the General Assembly was found to have regularly ignored the three-readings requirement (see Geja’s Cafe, 153 Ill. 2d at 260), the case at bar does not present such a technical or “purely procedural” (Geja’s Cafe, 153 Ill. 2d at 259) challenge. Rather, we are confronted with a case in which it is undisputed that the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate deliberately and shamelessly falsified their certifications regarding passage of the Act knowing that the bill was fundamentally defective. As the majority has observed, this act had been introduced for the first time on the very last day of the legislative session. At this point in time, section 8(d) made the enactment of newly introduced legislation constitutionally impossible. It should be noted that the very next day, indeed, the very next hour, the opposite political party took majority control of the House of Representatives. The deliberate falsification of the certifications required by section 8(d) to achieve passage of a defective bill that would have otherwise lapsed is unprecedented. Certainly our supreme court never intended to give its judicial imprimatur to such extraordinary and reprehensible conduct by its application of the enrolled bill doctrine, and never before has this doctrine been used to shield such patent dishonesty. Taken to its logical extreme, the enrolled bill doctrine, interpreted as the majority suggests, would force this court to uphold legislation against constitutional attack even if it were conceded that a majority of the members of the House and Senate had voted against its passage, so long as the president of the Senate and speaker of the House had issued certifications indicating that all procedures had been properly followed. See Dunigan, 165 Ill. 2d at 258 (Heiple, J., dissenting). This certainly cannot be the law of Illinois. Unfortunately, what was true more than 130 years ago necessarily remains true today: “[N]o man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” Final Accounting in the Estate of A.B., 1 Tucker (N.Y. Surr.) 247, 249 (1866). The drafters of our constitution wisely recognized the awesome power our General Assembly wields over the lives of our citizenry and tempered that power with a requirement that all legislation be announced on three separate days before it can be enacted into law. The failure to read this legislation on three separate days in this case was no mere “technical omission.” Rather, its passage, after 11 p.m. on the last day of the legislative session, with no previous warning, was an unprincipled ambush, a final power grab by a political party that had been relegated by the voters in the previous election to serve a minority role during the next legislative term in the House. This was, and there is no kinder way to say it, the act of desperate legislative leaders unwilling to subject their handiwork to the public scrutiny required by our state’s constitution. The enrolled bill doctrine was never intended to be applied in such circumstances. It should not be applied here. In this case, the Act is plainly unconstitutional. Accordingly, I respectfully but most vigorously dissent.