CRIMINAL LAW
Windhorst Leads Advocacy for Crime Victims in Resentencing Debate. State Representative Patrick Windhorst has long advocated for crime victims as Massac County State’s Attorney and now as an Illinois legislator. On Thursday, he led the Republican effort to help defeat legislation that would have allowed resentencing of murderers and rapists, including crimes against children.
Windhorst, the Republican spokesman on the House Judiciary Criminal Law Committee and the House Restorative Justice Committee, rose in opposition to a controversial piece of legislation that would grant people convicted of felonies, including murder and rape under the age of 21 the possibility of parole and resentencing.
During debate on HB 3332, Windhorst pointed to an existing youthful offender program already in place that provides an opportunity for parole for offenders under the age of 21 who are sentenced after 2019. HB 3332 would apply retroactively to all inmates who were under the age of 21 at the time of the commission of the crime. Because of Illinois’ Truth-In-Sentencing Laws, he noted that the majority of the individuals who would be eligible for resentencing under this legislation are those in prison for murder or sexual assault offenses. An evaluation by the Sentencing Policy Advisory Council revealed HB 3332 would apply to 774 individuals incarcerated for murder and 202 individuals incarcerated for sexual assault.
“With respect to victims, we need to give them finality in the criminal justice system,” Windhorst said. “They should not have to come back to court to relive the loss that they suffered. We should not be reducing sentences for murderers or those guilty of criminal sexual assault.”
Following Representative Windhorst’s comments, I questioned the sponsor about the number of inmates this bill would affect and whether felons who committed crimes against children would be included. When the sponsor responded it would; I immediately urged a “no” vote by all members of the chamber. I was followed by Representative Cabello, a former Rockford police detective, who informed the House of the brutality and horrors of these types of crimes which he had investigated over the years.
The bill ultimately failed with several Democrats voting no.
Rep. Windhorst leads the House Republican Truth in Public Safety (TIPS) Working Group; of which Representative Cabello and I are members. The group has introduced legislation aimed at protecting crime victims, retaining and recruiting law enforcement officers and ensuring pre-trial fairness applies to everyone, including victims and the public.
McCombie Passes Measure to Protect Sexual Assault Victims. This week, Illinois House Republican Leader Tony McCombie passed bipartisan legislation to prohibit co-pays for sexual assault exams. Leader McCombie presented the measure, calling it a commonsense bill to protect victims of sexual assault.
“This bill gives victims an added protection of knowing they will not be overburdened when they receive care,” said Leader McCombie. “It is important we close harmful loopholes when we find them in statute.”
The legislation, HB 2805, has the support of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch. The bill passed unanimously when it was presented for a vote on April 8th, 2025.
HB 2805 will now move forward to the Senate for further consideration.
EDUCATION
Legislation threatening Homeschool Freedom fails to advance in IL House. The Homeschool Act would impose a variety of mandates on homeschooling families, some of which are highly intrusive. As amended, the Act would require each parent or guardian of a homeschooled pupil to submit a notification and data form to the public-school bureaucracy. If a registration form is not submitted for a school-age child, the child may be classified as a truant. Truancy imposes potential penalties, including criminal penalties, upon the allegedly truant student and his or her parents or guardians.
Homeschool families from across Illinois have mobilized in significant opposition to the Homeschool Act. In response to this opposition, the Democratic sponsor of the Homeschool Act threw out the old language of the bill, and substituted the language of House Amendment #2 to HB 2827. The amended bill maintains intrusions into the lives of homeschooling families, and when the amendment was debated in a House committee this week, tens of thousands of witness slips were filed in opposition.
State Rep. Amy Elik, Republican Spokesperson for the House Education Policy Committee, helped lead the opposition to the onerous Homeschool Act. On Thursday, Rep. Elik issued the following statement regarding HB 2827:
“I have just heard that Terra Costa Howard will NOT be bringing the Homeschool Act to the floor for a vote this week. This is a big WIN for the Homeschool families, but the fight is not over! Keep making your voices heard!”
On Friday, Rep. Elik again stood up for homeschool families after the Democratic sponsor of the Homeschool Act blamed misinformation for the failure of her legislation.
FAIR MAPS
McCombie: Illinois Supreme Court does the Democrats’ dirty work. After the Illinois Supreme Court refused to take up Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie’s lawsuit to fight for Illinois voters through a fair map, she released the following statement:
“Today is a shameful day in Illinois history. The voices of voters have once again been silenced by a Democratic machine that will stop at nothing to cling to power. This isn’t leadership — it’s a raw, cynical power grab. Every Illinoisan, regardless of political affiliation, should be outraged by what just happened.
“Governor JB Pritzker lied to the people of this state. He promised a fair map — but instead stood by as his party drew the most partisan gerrymander possible, rigging the system for yet another decade. This isn’t democracy.
“Let’s be clear: Democrats have no interest in protecting voters — only in protecting their majority. They’ve proven they’ll twist the rules, ignore the public, and crush accountability to keep their grip on power. House Republicans will not stop exposing this injustice. We will fight every day to restore fairness, transparency, and trust in our elections — because the people of Illinois deserve nothing less.”
Rep. Spain: Ridiculous IL Supreme Court Decision Disenfranchises Voters. Following the opinion released Wednesday by the Illinois Supreme Court to reject House Republicans’ lawsuit against Democrats’ gerrymandered legislative maps based on the laches doctrine, or a lack of timeliness, Deputy House Republican Leader Ryan Spain released the following statement:
“This decision by the Illinois Supreme Court is infuriating. I think Leader McCombie expressed it perfectly – the court is doing the dirty work for an artificial supermajority of Democrats.
“It was Senator Dick Durbin who said, ‘The highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards.’ He was speaking about the U.S. Supreme Court, of course, but I would confirm that the same statement applies to the Illinois Supreme Court as well.
“It’s ridiculous and unfair for the Court to make this kind of decision to disenfranchise voters and do the dirty work of the Democrats for them. It was the Court, not the defendants, who raised the laches/timeliness defense, something Justice Overstreet showed clearly to be meritless in his strongly worded dissent.”
Spain also pointed back to 2016 and the citizen-led petition for fair maps that was struck down on a technicality by former Justice Thomas Kilbride. Kilbride’s decision used John Hooker, now infamous in the ComEd Four scandal, as the plaintiff to give then Speaker Mike Madigan and Illinois Democrats power to gerrymander legislative maps. Kilbride then lost his supreme court seat in 2020 because of that decision, one of the very few times an Illinois Supreme Court Justice has not been retained by the voters.
In response to Kilbride’s loss, Democrats bent the political winds to their advantage, and they gerrymandered the entire Illinois Supreme Court in 2021. Then, even worse, in the 2022 election, Democratic legislative leaders spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the seats for Justice Elizabeth Rochford and Justice Mary Kay O’Brien. In addition, the controversial All for Justice political action committee spent $7 million on those court races, flouting the rules of disclosure for political spending, for which they were later hit with a $99,500 fine.
Spain continued, “We need comprehensive ethics reform for the Illinois Supreme Court like Chuck Schumer introduced in Washington. We need conflict of interest disclosure, rules for recusal, rules for the disclosure of gifts and travel activity, and all the things that contributed to allowing this absurd decision to be possible.
Rep. Ugaste: Supreme Court Decision is an Injustice. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, Assistant Republican Leader Dan Ugaste issued the following statement:
“Never has a greater injustice been foisted on voters of Illinois through a judicial decision than was done today. This has to be the absolute worst. The court had a chance to make things right and to give the voters a chance to pick their representatives instead of representatives picking their voters. They declined because of a technical term in the law called laches, which I believe was completely misapplied. Someone has to be called to account on this. Justice Overstreet’s dissent did a fantastic job of laying out the problems with this decision. Timeliness is an issue that should not be raised by the court but by the defense instead.”
Editorial: Illinois Supreme Court’s refusal to hear gerrymandering case is a blow to democracy.
Last month, we urged Illinois Supreme Court justices to consider state Republicans’ strong arguments against extreme gerrymandering in the Land of Lincoln. To no one’s surprise, on Wednesday the Democratic majority on the high court seized on a technicality to avoid confronting the obvious and refused to hear the GOP’s case.
That leaves intact legislative maps that badly undermine democracy in Illinois. Any reasonable, non-partisan person looking at the facts would arrive at that conclusion. State House districts are so distorted that GOP candidates won 45% of the total vote for the Illinois House of Representatives in 2024 and just 34% of the seats.
That’s plain wrong, and the justices ought to be ashamed.
After multiple failed attempts in the past two decades to get a fair hearing before the Supreme Court, the GOP thought this time might be different. A lawsuit led by House Minority Leader Tony McCombie presented hard data, strong arguments that numerous bizarrely shaped districts violate the state Constitution, and even responded to court decisions in the past that had tossed GOP litigation because it was filed too close to an election.
Nothing doing.
The court refused to take up this latest case, not based on its merits but because the majority of justices said the plaintiffs waited too long to act. There’s no winning with this bunch, which appears content to oversee a judicial version of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.
Read the rest of the Chicago Tribune editorial.
STATE GOVERNMENT
House Republicans call Governor to task for agency mismanagement. Outraged at the continuing failures and mismanagement at several Illinois agencies, State Representatives Charlie Meier, Jeff Keicher, Patrick Sheehan, and Brad Fritts called on the Governor to take action to protect the state’s most vulnerable.
Reports of abuse, neglect and improper procedure have spurred an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice that will be conducting an audit of the State-Operated Developmental Centers (SODC), specifically the Choate, Shapiro, and Mabley Centers, for abuse and neglect.
“Frankly, I am just sick to my stomach hearing about these incidents, ” remarked Fritts. “These are just a few of the horrific examples of the abuse and neglect patients have experienced at Mabley. Imagine how many more individuals will never have their stories told because they went unreported.”
The Jack Mabley Developmental Center, located in Dixon, is one of three centers for adults with severe developmental disabilities included in this investigation.
“Unfortunately, Mabley Developmental Center has been rife with issues and utter mismanagement for years,” said Rep. Fritts. “Numerous cases of abuse and neglect have been reported at this facility that is supposed to protect and care for Illinoisans who have developmental disabilities.”
Rep. Charlie Meier, who has been a staunch advocate for people with developmental disabilities since taking office, focused on the disasters that have happened at the Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS). Meier pointed to several reported incidents of abuse at Community Integrated Living Arrangements (CILAs), that are not properly reported or investigated.
“Without DHS acknowledging their lack of oversight and the tragic abuse that happens at CILAs and SODCs as a result of their negligence, these tragedies of abuse will continue to be allowed to occur with no responses,” Meier said. “I am glad to help fight abuse anywhere, and it should all be stopped. It seems strange that we don’t follow up on our small CILAs.”
Rep. Meier urged DHS to take immediate action to ensure that those responsible for the care of individuals with disabilities are held accountable.
Rep. Sheehan spoke about the importance of safeguarding children and the need for DCFS to fulfill its mission. He highlighted alarming statistics showing that since July 2018, DCFS has failed to produce incident-specific reports for over 1,200 child deaths and more than 3,000 serious injuries under the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act.
“The frontline workers at DCFS are dedicated and work tirelessly, but they’re overburdened and lack the resources they need to protect the children in their care,” Rep. Sheehan said. “This is not their failure; it’s a failure of leadership and outdated practices.”
Rep. Jeff Keicher urged immediate action to address chaos at state agencies that, under Governor J.B. Pritzker’s leadership, have been riddled with controversy amidst reports of abuse, neglect, and improper procedures.
“Gov. Pritzker has been in office for six years, and, during that time, he and Democrats in the legislature have increased the annual state budget from $39 billion to $54 billion annually,” said Keicher. “Yet, we still have core agencies – DCFS, DHS – that are failing our most vulnerable.
“It’s time for the Governor and Democrats to stop the banter and join us in reform efforts to end this chaos at state agencies.”