Illinois Supreme Court Justices Received Massive Donations From Dem Gov Pritzker. They Won’t Recuse Themselves From Case Against Pritzker’s Gun Ban.

In a situation involving Democratic Governor, two justices on the Illinois Supreme Court refused to withdraw. J.. Despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from B. Pritzker and another plaintiff, the defendant’s’s gun restrictions.

State representative Dan Caulkins’ ( R. ) challenge to Illinois’s’s ban on assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines, which Pritzker signed into law in January, will be heard by the Supreme Court. Justices Elizabeth Rochford and Mary O’Brien were named as key defendants in the case by Pritzker and Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch( D. ), according to a motion made late last month by Caulkins’ attorney Jerry Stocks to disqualify them from the trial.

During their plans in November 2022, Pritzker gave Rochford and O’Brien$ 1 million each. The judges also received” six-figure funds” from a Welch-controlled campaign fund, according to Just the Newsreported. Both magistrates provided technical justifications for their refusal to recuse themselves on Friday.

Rochford stated on Friday that it is not necessary for me to recuse from this condition that members of my campaign committee may appear before this court as counsel or parties. According to” our supreme court rules, a judicial candidate’s’s campaign committee may ask for and accept reasonable campaign contributions and public support from lawyers.”

Rochford added that prior precedent” cautioned that courts may consider whether assaults on a judge’s’s impartiality are” merely subterfuge to avoid anticipated adverse decisions.”

Illinois brought the case before the State Supreme Court after appealing a Macon County judge’s’s decision that the gun ban was unconstitutional. Midway through May, the hearing is scheduled.

The optics don’t appear to be pretty good, according to state representative Brad Halbrook( R ). People’s’s faith in the government and the court is simply diminished by this.

As the Illinois State Rifle Association and other organizations have stated they intend to action, Pritzker’s’s weapons ban will probably encounter more legal challenges in the near future. The law is” not going to last ,” according to Dan Eldridge, a board member at the Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois. More than 20 officers declared they would never uphold the law.