With hate crimes rising across Illinois in the last five years, lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow people to sue if they receive threatening flyers on private property due to protected identity characteristics.
Democratic state Rep. Sharon Chung jumped on the bill as a co-sponsor after Bloomington-Normal faced its own incident recently with antisemitic flyers from white supremist groups.
“It shocked a lot of us in the community because it's something that we don't ever really think that we would see in downtown Bloomington, or in Bloomington-Normal, or anywhere for that matter,” Chung said. “So it really was quite shocking. And reaching out to some of my colleagues who have unfortunately dealt with this in their communities, I was made aware of this bill, so I decided to co-sponsor it.”
While it has gained support, opponents say the bill's language is vague and could be weaponized to hurt certain groups such as student protesters and activists.
The National Lawyers Guild Chicago opposed the bill in a statement.
“This legislation raises significant concerns regarding free speech rights and is ripe for potential misuse," the organization wrote, "If passed, this legislation would deter Illinoisans from engaging in First Amendment protected activity. While attacks on free speech are always concerning, this bill is particularly troubling given the attacks on our democracy the U.S. is currently facing from the Trump administration.”
Worker rights attorney Chris Williams said it could be used to target pro-Palestinian protestors with civil litigation, leaving them with a difficult choice to either defend their case or settle.
“It's a slippery slope when you start to create these civil actions for speech, which it's going to have a chilling effect,” Williams said. “Because people don't have the money to defend themselves, and if richer interests have money to bring those kinds of actions and can afford a lawyer, there's nothing you can do but either settle default or pay lots of money to defend yourself. “
Williams said fighting a lawsuit is time-consuming and expensive, and most college student protesters wouldn’t have the money to see it through.
Chung said she hadn’t heard much of the opposition until recently and can understand the concerns.
“But at the same time, again, this is sort of about people who are putting leaf-like flyers, hateful speech in that way that are specifically intended to sort of really strike fear in communities and that was when I knew that it had happened, that was there was a very visceral reaction,” Chung said.
The Anti-Defamation League [ADL] of the Midwest’s spokesperson Rebecca Weininger denied these claims. She said her organization pushed the bill to help combat hate crime.
This comes as ADL released its own recent report that said hate crime had risen throughout the state. The report was collected from the FBI, Cook County Human Rights Commission, and their own reporting.
“What this statute limits (and) what we care about is the behavior,” Weininger said. “Not the speech but the behavior of coming onto somebody's private property and threatening physical violence against them when the victim can prove that that was an intentional threat of physical violence, that a reasonable person would be threatened by that violence, and that the person who did the threatening has the apparent ability to carry out the threat.”
The organization formed to combat antisemitism has had controversies within and outside the organization with some members conflating criticism of Israel to antisemitism.
Weininger said the bill is not to target critics of Israel, and the bill wouldn’t have the ability to do it either way.
“If they're just throwing flyers around that call for the elimination of the State of Israel, that is also not violative of this legislation,” Weininger said. “So, we care very much that this legislation is very narrowly tailored to respond only to the threats of physical violence against the owners of private property, not an attempt to keep people from protesting in favor even if what they're protesting in favor of is harmful to me.”
Student visas at risk
The tension between the two sides comes as the federal government revoked student visas across the country for actions relating to protesting.
Visas were even revoked at ISU a few weeks ago, but there is no confirmation that it was due to protests. (ISU said Monday that those records have since been restored to active status, after a Trump administration reversal.)
That’s why Williams is concerned the bill could lead to a student’s private information being revealed to the suing party such as text messages and emails through the litigation process of discovery.
“It doesn't matter if I can win or not, right? I have a colorable claim,” Williams said. “I can argue I should be entitled to look at their cell phone text messages to get at their intent, to get at what they were thinking, to get at whether they intended that to be malicious or not. I have the right to do that in civil litigation."
Weininger argued the process for discovery is a strict and multistep process which would only be guaranteed if it would lead to a conclusion of the case.
“So if you file a lawsuit merely to try to get to discovery, you're wasting your time,” Weininger said, “because the scrutiny through which a piece of litigation has to go before it gets past a motion to dismiss is very serious. And because this law is so narrowly tailored to respond to a particular form of threat and violence, you have to be able to show that you have facts to support those very specific requirements.”
Ed Yohnka with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said his organization is neutral but shares concerns about the execution of the bill in a tense political climate.
This is why the bill is currently in limbo. The original lawmaker who filed the bill, Democratic state Rep. Margaret Croke of Chicago, handed responsibility over to Rep. Dave Vella [D-Rockford].
A lawyer himself, Vella said he plans on amending the language of the bill to be clearer and have consequences for weaponizing the bill.
Vella said the amendment process will involve advocates from all groups such as pro-Palestinian activists.
“What we are talking about is two-fold,” Vella said. “One is called a slap motion which allows a falsely accused person to go into court and get their case dismissed right away and get some kind of monetary value from the accuser. So, if somebody tries to use our bill in a way that is not meant to, they get penalized because we don’t want anybody to stop free speech.”
But Vella is not certain whether the bill will get revived this session.
“I got meetings with groups this week trying to figure out whether that is possible,” Vella said. “If it is, then an extension would be a good idea. If not, we’ll wait and work it over the Zoom.”
The bill is currently in the Rules committee which usually means it is dead, but some lawmakers believe it could come back in the form of a shell bill.
At the very most, Vella said it could be brought back next year with updated language.
