Our previews of the newest additions to the Illinois Supreme Court’s civil docket continue with Bettis v. Marsaglia, an election law case from the Fourth District. Bettis poses the question of whether a plaintiff’s failure to name the Electoral Board as a party defendant and separately serve the Board with her petition for review in the Circuit Court deprives the Circuit Court of jurisdiction.
The plaintiff in Bettis tried to put a proposition on the ballot regarding the School District’s issuance of certain working cash bonds. Objections were filed, alleging that the plaintiff’s petitions were unnumbered and improperly bound. The Electoral Board sustained the objections, and the plaintiff sought to file a petition for judicial review in the Circuit Court.
The plaintiff’s petition named only two individuals – the objectors – as parties. Although the certificate of service reflected service on all members of the Electoral Board, it didn’t reflect separate service on the Board as an entity. The defendants moved to dismiss, arguing that these two defects deprived the Circuit Court of subject matter jurisdiction. The Circuit Court agreed and tossed the case.
On appeal, the defendants argued that since the election the plaintiff was aiming for had already come and gone, the appeal was moot. The Appellate Court agreed that the appeal was technically moot, but opted to decide it anyway under the public interest exception, concluding that the appeal presented issues of public concern which had divided the Appellate Court and which were likely to recur. Therefore, the court addressed the merits.
The subject matter jurisdiction issues depended on the proper construction of Section 10-10.1(a) of the Election Code (10 ILCS 5/10-10.1(a)). According to the statute, a party seeking judicial review of a decision of the Electoral Board must “file a petition with the clerk of the court” located in the “county in which the hearing of the electoral board was held.” In addition, the party must “serve a copy of the petition upon the electoral board and other parties to the proceeding by registered or certified mail within 5 days after service.”
The Court rejected defendants’ claim that the plaintiff’s failure to name the Board and its members as defendants was fatal to the Circuit Court’s jurisdiction. The statute said nothing at all about the caption on the petition, the Court pointed out. In doing so, the Court distinguished Russ v. Hoffman and Bill v. Education Officers Electoral Board of Community Consolidated School District No. 181, both of which involved not only a faulty caption, but also failure to serve the individual Board members.
The defendants’ second argument – that the plaintiff’s failure to separately serve the Board was fatal – met with more success, however. The districts of the Appellate Court have split on the question of whether the Board must be separately served, or whether service on the Board members was sufficient, the Court noted. The Fourth District opted to follow the First District, holding that the statute unambiguously required service on the Board, not just its members, and that failure to effect such service deprived the Circuit Court of jurisdiction.
To date, the decisions holding that the requirements of Section 10-10.1(a) are jurisdictional come from the Appellate Court. It will be interesting to see whether or not that view is challenged at the Supreme Court, or the debate focuses exclusively on the question of whether service on Board members is sufficient. In any event, we expect Bettis to be decided in six to eight months.