FEDERAL court intervention in state civil actions should be refrained from, according to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling May 31. The court said in Trainor v. Hernandez that a federal court should refrain from stepping into state court cases when the state has shown that it has an important interest to vindicate. The issue in question was a U.S. District Court ruling declaring the Illinois Attachment Act unconstitutional in a case involving welfare fraud. In overturning the lower court ruling, Justice Byron White said the state had been interfered with in its attempt to safeguard its public aid program through pending action in its own court.
The Pollution Control Board may place strict time limitations on variances from Pollution discharge regulations, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled June 1. In Monsanto v. The Pollution Control Board, the court reversed an appellate court ruling, and declared that in "fulfilling its mandate to safeguard the public health, the Board can deny a variance, or, as in this case, set stringent conditions upon a variance" despite any hardship on plants or businesses.
The case decided was over a request by the William Krummich Chemical Plant at Sauget, owned by Monsanto Company, for a permanent variance from regulations limiting mercury discharges to public sewers — sewers which eventually empty into the Mississippi River.
Watergate took a considerable toll among lawyers and the status of legal professions, a toll that is still being paid, as G. Bradford Cook of Chicago can testify. The Illinois Supreme Court suspended Cook on June 1 from practicing law in this state for three years on grounds of "gross misconduct." Cook, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, admitted lying to a Watergate grand jury in an investigation of improper CREEP campaign contributions from fugitive financier Robert Vesco. Cook's suspension was "for a period of three years, effective as of October 14, 1975." He had previously been barred from practicing for a similar three year period in Nebraska, and for life before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the power of the Regional Transportation Authority to issue revenue bonds and levy taxes in the May ruling Day v. Regional Transportation Authority. The appellant Robert G. Day had challenged the authority of the RTA to issue bonds, saying that such power violated the state constitution's "State debt" provision, and that RTA's taxing authority amounted to an unwarranted surrender of the legislature's exclusive powers in that area. The court dismissed those arguments and others in upholding the RTA's establishment legislation.
In other rulings, the court upheld in Illinois v. Estate of Sarah A. Scott a statute (Ill. Rev. Stat. 1975, Ch. 38, sec. 180-3) requiring convicted felons to pay for the cost of their prosecution. It also upheld an appellate court ruling {Lombard v. Pollution Control Board) that the Pollution Control Board lacks authority to require that counties establish regional water treatment plants.
28 / August 1977 / Illinois Issues