Courthouse News brings us this story about how a class action suit will challenge the validity of red light cameras in Chicago. It will be interesting to see since these laws have been overturned in a number of other states.
The class claims that “at some point before May 20, 2005, one or more high-ranking officials of Chicago realized that the city’s camera enforcement system was not authorized under Illinois law, and enlisted the aid of one or more members of Chicago’s delegation to the Illinois General Assembly to develop and pass a statute ostensibly to legitimize Chicago’s then-illegal camera enforcement system.”
But the bill’s “main proponent in the Senate, from Chicago,” told a Senate committee in March 2006 that “‘at the request of some members in the – from both parties in the Transportation Committee, they indicated they didn’t want to have this option in their counties, so we limited it to the more populous counties,'” the complaint states, citing a transcript of the Senate committee hearing.
The class claims that “the limitation of cameras to municipalities in just eight named counties violates the Illinois Constitution of 1970 because it creates facially local legislation which could have been made general.”
