Circuit Court Rejects Illinois Lawmakers’ Challenge to Senate Bill 328’s Expansion of Toxic-Tort Jurisdiction

On May 31, 2025, the Illinois General Assembly passed Senate Bill 328, which significantly expands Illinois jurisdiction in toxic-tort litigation by conditioning foreign corporations' ability to transact business in the state on their consent to the exercise of general jurisdiction by Illinois courts. Greenberg Traurig explained the far-reaching nature of this change in a June GT Alert.

Gov. Pritzker signed the bill into law on August 15. A circuit court recently dismissed one challenge to the law brought by various Illinois lawmakers.

Illinois Lawmakers Sued to Declare Senate Bill 328 Null and Void

On June 17, just over two weeks after Senate Bill 328 passed, a group of 47 Illinois lawmakers filed a lawsuit in Sangamon County against Representative Emanuel "Chris" Welch, the Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and Senator Don Harmon, President of the Illinois Senate. The plaintiffs claimed that the process of passing the Senate Bill-which Speaker Welch and President Harmon certified as complying with all procedural rules-violated the "Three Readings Rule" in the Illinois Constitution. Under this Rule, a bill must "be read by title on three different days in each house" of the General Assembly before passage. Ill. Const. Art. IV, § 8(d). According to court filings, the plaintiffs sought an injunction and a declaration that Senate Bill 328 is null and void because it failed to comply with the Three Readings Rule.

The plaintiffs alleged that, hours before Senate Bill 328's passage, it purported to amend portions of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure concerning e-filing and pleadings. At the "eleventh hour" of the legislative session, however, the plaintiffs claimed that a floor amendment "completely replaced" the existing language with the toxic-tort jurisdiction law that ultimately passed. The plaintiffs asserted that this essentially new bill was not read three times and therefore violated the Three Readings Rule.

Speaker Welch and President Harmon claimed that the title of Senate Bill 328 was read three times before passage. The 47 lawmakers replied that the title ("An Act Concerning Civil Law") was too vague to apprise lawmakers of the bill's contents and that the bill was titled before the toxic-tort amendments.

The Circuit Court Dismissed the Lawsuit and Rejected the Lawmakers' Constitutional Challenges

Speaker Welch and President Harmon moved to dismiss the lawsuit. Among other arguments, they contended that pursuant to the "enrolled-bill doctrine," the court should not reach the issue of whether Senate Bill 328 complied with the Three Readings Rule. Under the enrolled-bill doctrine, "once the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate certify that the procedural requirements for passing a bill have been met, a bill is conclusively presumed to have met all procedural requirements for passage." Accuracy Firearms, LLC v. Pritzker, 2023 IL App (5th) 230035, ¶ 36. Illinois courts "will not invalidate legislation on the basis of the three-readings requirement if the legislation has been certified." Id. Separately, Speaker Welch and President Harmon also argued that because the lawmakers are not foreign corporations potentially subject to Senate Bill 328's new jurisdictional requirements, they lacked standing to challenge its passage.

The lawmakers countered that though Senate Bill 328 was certified, the enrolled-bill doctrine "renders the Three Readings Rule utterly meaningless" because lawmakers may falsely certify that the bill complied, precluding judicial review. The plaintiffs sought a change in the law, stating that the "era of abuse of the Three Readings Rule and the Court's blind adherence to the Enrolled Bill Doctrine must come to an end, and it should end with the invalidation of SB 328." They also asserted they had standing to bring this lawsuit because each of them, "by virtue of being members of the General Assembly, have been directly affected by the [allegedly unconstitutional] procedure by which SB 328 was passed."

On August 21, the circuit court granted the motion to dismiss, agreeing both that the enrolled-bill doctrine barred the challenge and that the plaintiffs lacked standing. It explained that while the Illinois Supreme Court noted in 1992 that "ignoring the three-readings requirement has become a procedural regularity," Geja's Café v. Metro. Pier & Exposition Auth., 153 Ill. 2d 239, 260 (1992), the Illinois Supreme Court has since "addressed three readings challenges on several occasions and has, without exception, followed the enrolled bill rule." Noting that the parties agreed that Speaker Welch and President Harmon certified Senate Bill 328 as complying with all procedural requirements, and concluding itself bound by Supreme Court precedent, the circuit court dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice.

The circuit court then went further, separately holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge Senate Bill 328. According to the court, Senate Bill 328 affects only "foreign corporations that will have to consent to the general jurisdiction of the Illinois Courts." Thus, it continued, because the plaintiff lawmakers are not foreign corporations, they will never be subject to or injured by the law. Accordingly, the circuit court found that no actual controversy existed and that the plaintiffs had an insufficient interest in the lawsuit, as required to have standing to bring a declaratory-judgment action. In short, the circuit court dismissed the lawsuit on this separate ground because "Senate Bill 328 can never affect [the] plaintiffs."

After the circuit court's ruling, Senate Bill 328 and its profound shift in Illinois jurisdiction law persist. On September 11, however, the plaintiff lawmakers appealed the ruling, continuing their challenge to Senate Bill 328.