Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been named in another lawsuit for his COVID-19-related executive orders.
On May 13, Will County board member Steve Balich filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division against Pritzker and the state of Illinois, seeking damages.
Co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Will County GOP chair George Pearson, pet groomer Samantha L. Palya and Amanda Hameran.
"I've gotten all kinds of calls from businesses complaining about why they're not open," Balich said in a video posted to Youtube as he was leaving the law offices of Bruggemann & Hurst in Mokena. "I don't have a good answer. People are suffering, people of my district are crying out to me to do something. So I filed this lawsuit."
In the video, he outlined some of the concerns that people have come to him with since the stay-at-home order was put in place.
“The data is all screwed up. Nobody has the right numbers. Nobody can answer the question – why you can go to Walmart or K-mart or the local 7-11, the liquor stores, but you can’t go to a church. The church could distance you real easy. They hold 500-600 people. They could separate you by six feet,” Balich said.
He listed other issues that people have called him about—from small businesses worried they will have to close to people who have lost their jobs and their stimulus checks did not cover health insurance after they lost that too.
“The only thing I could have figured was doing this lawsuit," Balich said. "We’re suing for damages. The state of Illinois is going to have to pay all the people who filed the same lawsuit. They’re going to have to pay a lot of money, a whole lot of money.”
Two Republican lawmakers and three entrepreneurs in Springfield—hair salon and restaurant owners—have also sued Pritzker due to his implementation of 30-day consecutive emergency orders.
The Balich lawsuit has a different focus—the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment's takings clause, and the state’s constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 15, right of eminent domain.
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