Prairie State Wire

Thomas Devore for Attorney General has issued the following press release:

August 5, 2022 - A Sangamon County judge on Thursday granted a restraining order against the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS). Circuit Court Judge Karen Tharp ruled that the IDHS was in violation of state law that mandates that the agency must notify county sheriffs' offices of the placement of inmates declared unfit for trial within 20 days.

According to a report in KHQA, IDHS had relied on two executive orders–Executive Orders 20-24 and 22-15–issued during the pandemic to suspend and delay the admission of inmates into state mental health facilities.  

As a result, some inmates who were deemed unfit to stand trial and in need of psychiatric treatment spent extra months in county jails awaiting transfer to a treatment facility. 

In her ruling, Circuit Court judge Karen Tharp said Pritzker's second pandemic executive order "is an unlawful use of his authority under the Illinois Emergency Management Act (IEMAA) and that it is unlawful and in violation of accused unfit individuals' due process rights." 

Judge Tharp added that the purpose of granting the governor authority to issue orders during a disaster is to give him the ability to deal with that specific emergency. It was not, however, intended to give "him unlimited authority to control the movements of individuals or perform any duty for any reason whatsoever." 

Attorney General Candidate, Tom Devore, issued a statement today saying, “I want to thank Judge Tharp for her ruling. JB Pritzker’s executive orders have been unconstitutional from the second he issued them. People have been hurt by his orders for almost 3 years. The tragedy is, he never had the authority to inflict those orders on any of us. This is what happens when you have political leaders, like my opponent Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who are more focused on protecting their own power and their campaign funders, than on protecting the people who elected them to serve.

“Raoul should have advocated for the people of Illinois two and a half years ago. He let us down and people have suffered. By contrast, I’ve spent the past two and a half years standing with families, first responders and state workers to challenge the Governor’s orders and to ensure that the rights of Illinoisans were not being abused by powerful politicians. I am running for Attorney General to continue that work.”