There are challenges to Governor J.B. Pritzker’s mandates. The challenges are in line with the 1998 Health Care Right of Conscience Act, which prevents people from facing adverse consequences for refusing procedures that go against their conscience. Pritzker continues to say he will support efforts to defend his mandates across the state. One El Paso district case has been taken on by an Illinois attorney. Unit parents’ have submitted their request for consideration but have not received word on acceptance.
State Rep. Dan Brady said anytime you head to litigation, it’s anybody’s right, but it certainly seems to be something more long term and at the end of the term, more times than not it doesn’t seem to satisfy what the initial intent was by those filing the lawsuit.
“Then it doesn’t come out in their favor. We have long since said ourselves, many of my colleagues have long since said, ‘we wish we could have some type of vote to represent our constituents dealing with executive orders from the governor, we should at least have a vote on these orders coming out of Springfield.’ It’s anybody’s right to do what they are doing, with filing litigation,” said Brady. “Sometimes litigation is something that drains financially and the outcome is very questionable obviously. It’s unfortunate that parents find themselves in that situation that they are having to be potentially part of a class action lawsuit.”
Well El Paso Gridley School district Unit 11’s case has been taken by Tom DeVore. Amanda Harris, an El Paso plaintiff, tells Cities that last night, Oct. 14, that DeVore officially took their case.
Unit 5 was trying to collect money as well, and met their goal of $5,324 .
“Ours [El Paso] was super short notice, because Tom decided to take on a couple more districts. We basically scrounged together eight people that would be willing to be named plaintiffs on the lawsuit,” said Harris. “We had somebody who was willing to front the money. We kind of pulled money from other parts of our budget, trying to make the money work. Now we’re trying to raise money to replace some of the funds we had to set up front to get Tom to take our case. We borrowed from Peter to pay Paul. So we’re trying to find people who would be interested in helping fund this.”
The El Paso plaintiffs have set up a Go Fund Me and there’s the local bank is Heartland Community Bank in El Paso, where an account was opened under the name “Freedom Project” and anyone pays by check to that account all checks would be made out to Kelly Harms as she is the one collecting the funds for our group.
“We had a very short period of time to turn around in order to find eight willing family’s to be plaintiffs on the lawsuit. We were able to find that. To try and come up with the funds to be able to meet the deadline,” said Harris.
Harris said they submitted their request for consideration 15 minutes before the deadline.
So what are the next steps?
“They have accepted our case. I’m not exactly sure what the next step is. The legal part of it, I’m not quite sure. I do know we are included as one of the districts he has taken on that will be fighting for our rights,” said Harris. “What we would like to do is: bring back local control. We want our rights restored and local control. That’s how it’s supposed to be set up. We should be able to make local decision based off local data.
