Legal updates

September 21, 2022

    Illinois’ First District Appellate Court has ruled against a taxpayer group’s effort to block this

November’s general election vote on a union-sponsored and very union-friendly Constitutional

amendment. Sachen, et al. v. Illinois State Board of Elections, et al., 2022 IL App (4 th ) 220470,

filed August 26, 2022.

While acknowledging that the proposed “workers’ rights” amendment might not apply to

workers employed by private employers in Illinois, the Appellate Court emphasized that the

amendment, if passed by Illinois voters in November 2022, would clearly apply to workers

employed by Illinois public entities such as the State of Illinois, counties, municipalities, and

special districts, as well as to the unions which claim to represent them.

If adopted by voters in November, unions will argue the amendment forever locks-in a wide

variety of unique organizing and collective bargaining rights not possessed collectively by public

employees or their unions in any other state of the union, much like the pension clause of the

constitution has stifled any meaningful pension reform! If you care about this development,

please consider sounding the alarm to others!

For a more exhaustive discussion of this proposed amendment, please see Ted Clark’s article for

the Illinois Municipal League, entitled “An Analysis of the Union-Backed Proposed Workers’

Rights Constitutional Amendment.”

Clark Baird Smith LLP   6133 N. River Road   Suite 1120   Rosemont, IL 60018   
847-378-7700   www.cbslawyers.com