Madison County Associate Judge Ronald J. Foster Jr. declared Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s forum law favoring Cook and Sangamon County is unconstitutional and denied Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s motion to transfer an Alton gun store’s constitutional challenge to both the venue law and the firearm liability law.
“Sangamon county is simply inconvenient to plaintiff, inconvenient to plaintiff’s witnesses, and defendant lists no witnesses that Sangamon County would be convenient for,” Foster wrote. “While hardly entitled to any weight, even the location of plaintiff’s counsel is in Madison County. While documents may be relatively easy to move, there is no showing that any relevant documents are anywhere other than Madison County.”
House Bill 3062 was passed by the 103rd General Assembly and signed into law by Pritzker on June 6. The law strips circuit courts in 100 of Illinois’ 102 counties of their power to preside over constitutional challenges. Prior to the new law, any party challenging the constitutionality of a controversial law had the authority to file their cases in any of the state’s 25 judicial circuits.
Plaintiff Piasa Armory LLC filed a claim against the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act in Madison County Circuit Court. The plaintiff challenged the forum rule for constitutional claims and moved for summary judgment in regards to venue. Raoul objected to Madison County venue and filed a motion to transfer to Sangamon County.
On March 4, Foster granted summary judgment for the plaintiff and denied transfer.
Because Raoul moved to transfer the suit from Piasa Armory’s preferred forum under the forum law, Foster found that the plaintiff had standing to challenge its constitutionality.
In his order, Foster relied upon the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling in Williams v Illinois State Scholarship Commission, which is the only state court precedent addressing whether a statute fixing venue violated a litigant’s due process rights.
In Williams, Cook County was set as the “exclusive venue” for lawsuits brought against student loan borrowers by the state agency tasked with administering those loans.
The Supreme Court concluded that “the burden of an inconvenient forum, when combined with the indigence of the ‘borrowers’ and other factors, ‘effectively deprived the borrowers of any means of defending themselves in these actions’ and therefore constituted ‘a due process deprivation.’”
Similar to the student loan borrowers in Williams, Piasa Armory demonstrated that both Sangamon and Cook Counties are inconvenient forums.
“As applied to plaintiff in this case, as a practical matter, transferring this action to Sangamon County will deprive it of the ability to put up its best challenge to the constitutionality of [Firearm Industry Responsibility Act],” Foster wrote.
Foster noted that if the case were transferred, potential witnesses would have to travel to Sangamon County. Additionally, both the plaintiff and counsel Thomas Maag of Maag Law Firm are located in Madison County.
Further, the state did not cite any witnesses from Sangamon County that it would call to the stand.
“While it is indeed possible for witnesses to physically travel long distances, the issue at hand pertains to reasonableness and convenience, not mere physical capability,” Foster wrote.
The state had argued that the availability of remote proceedings made Sangamon County convenient for both parties. Foster wasn’t convinced. He found that the state could just as easily participate in Madison County using the same remote means.
“The court finds the government interest here minimal at best,” Foster wrote. “Sangamon County is not more important than any other county in this state. The fact that it is the seat of state government is ultimately irrelevant. Based on the record before the court, the General Assembly will not be called as witnesses.”
“The Attorney General is responsible for representing the state and its officers in court in every county,” he added. “Therefore, for all these reasons, transferring this action to Sangamon County would simply make it more difficult for the plaintiff to prosecute its constitutional claims.”
“While this court acknowledges without hesitation that the judges in Sangamon County would impartially handle this case, the reality remains that the greater the distance between the parties, witnesses, the sources of evidence, the more arduous it becomes to access the courthouse,” he continued.
Piasa Armory also argued that the venue bill is unconstitutional because it violated the Three Readings Rule. It argued that the Illinois General Assembly took a shell bill intended to make a punctuational change to the Code of Civil Procedure, gutted it, and replaced all of its text with the firearm liability law.
Foster agreed, but stated that he must follow Illinois Supreme Court precedent foreclosing such challenges.
“Thus, while plaintiff concedes this court cannot rule in its favor on the issue, it is clear that plaintiff intends to challenge existing law at a higher court,” Foster wrote. “To that end, plaintiff’s Three Readings Rule challenge is denied, and this court’s ruling in this case is in no way based upon the Three Readings Rule. If the precedent of the Supreme Court were different, this court would apply that precedent.”
However, because the statute violates due process for plaintiffs who reside outside of Cook or Sangamon County, Foster declared it unconstitutional and denied Raoul’s motion to transfer.
He wrote that Raoul is expected to appeal the order. With that in mind, Foster ordered him to answer Counts I through IV of the complaint within 30 days. Count V pertains to the venue.
Piasa Armory's constitutional challenge
Maag filed the lawsuit on Aug. 17 on behalf of Piasa Armory, which is a dealer of firearms and firearm accessories in Alton.
In regards to his venue challenge, Maag claimed Pritzker and the Illinois legislature enacted the rule limiting jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to Cook and Sangamon Counties after “having been successfully sued on multiple occasions in recent years for violating the constitutional rights of citizens of Illinois.”
He wrote that the law is “designed to limit Second Amendment and related challenges to forums that the state considers either more friendly to its position, or sufficiently inconvenient to would-be plaintiffs to deter such actions from being filed in the first place, and abolishes forum non conveniens for those cases, no matter how inconvenient or inaccessible the forum is to the victim of the constitutional violation, and no matter where the effect of the Constitutional violation took place.”
“In fact, one of the great crimes against the colonies of King George III, prior to the Revolution, as noted in the Declaration of Independence was, in essence, fixing venue in far off and inconvenient lands,” Maag wrote.
“The legal rights which a litigant might seek to exercise or protect exist only to the extent they are enforceable through the court system,” he added. “Depriving a litigant of the opportunity to use the courts effectively makes these legal rights worthless, which is the intent of the statute, so as to allow the state to violate the Constitution with relative impunity.”
“By making forums far off and inconvenient, and with possibly no connection to the dispute, the challenged statute substantially increases the likelihood of an inability to bring a successful constitutional challenge, especially by the infirm and impoverished, the weakest among us,” he continued.
Maag also argued that the Illinois Attorney General has satellite offices throughout the entire state and regularly litigates in even Illinois county, meaning it is already intimately familiar with local rules and procedures and equipped to litigate in the preferred circuit court.
“Therefore, any argument that requiring a plaintiff to file suits only in counties of Cook and Sangamon would grossly inconvenience the Attorney General has no basis in fact,” Maag wrote.
On behalf of Piasa Armory, Maag also seeks a declaration that House Bill 0218, or the Firearm Industry Responsibility Act, is unconstitutional and an injunction barring its enforcement.
“Under HB0218, a dealer of firearms and firearm accessories, including Piasa Armory, LLC, may potentially be named in a civil action as a defendant by the Attorney General of Illinois for third parties misuse of firearms and firearms products,” Maag wrote.
However, Maag argues that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) immunizes gun dealers from such claims.
He also argues that the liability law is void for vagueness for failing to specify what speech is targeted and is inconsistent with the nation’s historical tradition.
Madison County Circuit Court case number 23-LA-1129