Court Clarifies Scope of Home-Rule Units’ Administrative Hearing Authority
Recently, an Illinois Appellate Court clarified the authority of a City’s administrative hearing department where there are overlapping state and municipal traffic regulations. In Potek, et al. v. City of Chicago, the Court held that certain local traffic violations were properly heard in City administrative hearings rather than before a court.
In 2005, the City amended its traffic code to prohibit all use of cell phones while driving. In 2010, the General Assembly passed a narrower law that only prohibited texting, emailing, or instant messaging while driving. It wasn’t until 2014, that the General Assembly expanded state law to prohibit the use of cellphones while driving altogether.
Between 2012 and 2014, a number of drivers were issued notices that they violated the City ordinance by talking on their
cell phones while driving. These violations were considered, and several
tickets were paid, through the City’s administrative hearing department. Certain ticketed individuals later sued the City, claiming that the City did not have the
authority to decide their traffic tickets based on a state statute that they claimed restricted municipal authority to hold administrative
hearings. This statute (contained in the Illinois Municipal Code) states that municipalities may not hold
administrative hearings (1) beyond the scope of their statutory or home-rule
authority or (2) to prosecute “any offense under the Illinois Vehicle Code or a
similar offense that is a traffic
regulation governing the movement of vehicles.”
The trial court dismissed the individuals' claims for lack of standing and they appealed. The
Appellate Court reversed the standing ruling, finding that the individuals did face a real injury as
a result of the City delegating the traffic violations to the administrative
hearing department rather than sending the tickets to a local court, so they had standing to challenge in court the administrative hearing department's authority to find them liable and collect fines for their violations.
However,
the Appellate Court did not rule in the individuals' favor on their substantive authority argument and instead agreed with the City that its administrative hearing department had
the authority to adjudicate several of the traffic violations based on the
Illinois Municipal Code. Through the end of 2013, the City ordinance, and not state statute, prohibited talking on a cell phone while driving. As a result,
the Court determined that the two laws at the time did not regulate a “similar
offense” that required prosecution in court rather than before an
administrative agency. The Court also noted that as a home-rule unit of government, the City’s authority to conduct
administrative hearings “must be construed liberally.” The Court remanded back to the trial court those tickets that were
issued after the state law had changed to prohibit talking while driving to determine whether the drivers were
entitled to a refund to the fines they had paid to the administrative hearing
department.
Authored by Erin Monforti
& Julie Tappendorf, Ancel Glink
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