Groups from multiple Chicagoland school districts join forces to challenge mandates by Pritzker, state agencies

Money is being raised in several Chicagoland school districts to join a consolidated action against Governor J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois Department of Public Health, The Kerr Report has learned. 

Tom DeVore, an attorney based in downstate Greenville, plans to file the action within the next week to 10 days. 

“We want to consolidate it all into one case,” DeVore told The Kerr Report by phone Friday. “Parents and teachers in individual school districts, if they want to join on behalf of other school districts and put into one big case.”

The consolidated action of numerous school districts against Pritzker and the state agencies would be the first of its kind involving Chicagoland school districts.

Several individual cases have been filed by DeVore’s firm on behalf of plaintiffs in downstate Illinois. A judge in Effingham County ruled Wednesday against ISBE in restoring recognition status to Beecher City and Cowden-Herrick school districts. ISBE had put the Central Illinois districts on probation for implementing a mask optional policy, a policy in violation of Pritzker’s August school mask mandate.

A lawsuit was filed last week in Kane County on behalf of four educators seeking to stop Pritzker’s statewide vaccine mandate for teachers. 

But the large scale aspect of this action, involving three of the largest school districts by enrollment in Chicagoland, is unprecedented.