* Coming late to this. Thanks to a commenter for linking to it…

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is contending a federal decree, which has been in place 48 years and authorizes oversight of state employment practices, is no longer needed because the state has “reformed” itself and made patronage a thing of the past.

“After nearly half a century, it is time for the 1972 decree to sunset,” Pritzker said in a July 14 court document, drawn up by Illinois Assistant Attorney General Brent Stratton.

Chicago lawyers Michael Shakman and Paul Lurie sued the Cook County Democratic Party in 1969 to fight patronage. That suit led to the Shakman Decrees, federal court orders which bar Illinois government from letting politics improperly control government jobs and allows for federal oversight of hiring practices in Cook County and Springfield.

Noelle Brennan, a lawyer appointed as a monitor under the decree, filed a report Feb. 6 in which she noted work had started toward a comprehensive employment plan for state government. However, Brennan said Pritzker’s office had begun restricting communication between her team and state agencies. In October, Brennan reported the state had failed to put together rules and guidelines to “address certain current systemic practices that are vulnerable to manipulation” or which could violate the Shakman decree.

As an example, Brennan said some employees are given temporary or interim promotions, which sidesteps oversight and the competitive process. Brennan asked District Judge Edmond Chang to broaden the scope of her watchdog activities.

* The governor’s two main arguments…

First, the State has reformed its employment practices to unquestionably pass constitutional muster. The State has instituted a durable solution to prevent future patronage employment practices. It has a comprehensive “exempt list” – approved by the Plaintiffs, the Special Master, and the Court – which the Court identified as the central infirmity of the State’s prior employment practices when Plaintiffs sought supplemental relief in 2014 and 2016. addition, the State, by statute, has instituted an independent oversight structure in the Office of Executive Inspector General, which has within it a dedicated Hiring and Employment Monitoring Division – comprised of ten professionals with expertise and experience in monitoring the State’s employment practices to prevent and uncover political and other forms of discrimination, misconduct, and inefficiency.

In addition, the Special Master exhaustively has monitored the State’s employment policies and practices for the past six years, and has filed 350 pages of detailed reports describing her work and her findings. Those reports acknowledge the State’s “significant progress,” e.g., Dkt. 6565 at 1, and do not identify a single patronage violation during that timeframe – let alone the kind of widespread illegal policies or practices to justify continued systemic intervention.

Second, during the protracted life of the decree, this case has become unmoored from the Constitution. Article III confines courts to cases and controversies involving individual federal rights. To ensure the presence of a case and controversy, Article III requires, as an irreducible constitutional minimum, an injury that is fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful conduct, and that is likely to be redressed by the requested relief. E.g., Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992). Plaintiffs are two private lawyers who, regardless of how they came to be litigants in 1969, now in no respects satisfy this constitutional minimum. They simply are not affected, let alone injured, by the State’s employment policies – they are not State employees and have no desire to become State employees.

A half century ago, Plaintiffs obtained a foothold to standing and to a federal forum by complaining of a specific patronage scheme. Plaintiffs alleged that as an independent candidate for the 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention and a voter supporting that candidate, they were injured by a systemic practice whereby incumbents forced public employees to do political work and make political donations at the risk of being fired. Plaintiffs alleged that this army of campaign workers co-opted from the ranks of public employees tipped the electoral playing field such that candidates and voters themselves suffered cognizable injury.

Now, almost five decades since the decree was entered, Plaintiffs do not and cannot plausibly assert that the State is perpetuating any such scheme. Similarly, the standing jurisprudence that originally (although tenuously) recognized Plaintiffs’ claim to involve a justiciable case-and-controversy has evolved to unequivocally preclude litigating generalized grievances and policy preferences in the federal courts. The factual and legal predicates upon which the federal court originally entered the 1972 decree therefore no longer exist.

As a result, the Constitution compels termination of the decree, not its continued existence. In evaluating whether to vacate a consent decree, “concerns of federalism should factor strongly into the court’s analysis.” O’Sullivan v. City of Chicago, 396 F.3d 843, 868 (7th Cir. 2005). “Unless there is a substantial claim under federal law, the district judge should not enter or continue to enforce a consent decree affecting the operation of a governmental body.” Evans v. City of Chicago, 10 F.3d 474, 482 (7th Cir. 1993). There remains no case-and- controversy and no federal interest in this case to justify the extraordinary intrusion of a federal court into sovereign State affairs.

As explained further below, these developments compel an unequivocal conclusion: there is no basis for continued federal court involvement in the State’s employment practices. After nearly half a century, it is time for the 1972 decree to sunset.

Thoughts?