Excerpts from the CookCountyRecord.com:

The Illinois Supreme Court has once again rejected a legislative attempt to modify public employee pension funding rules, emphasizing that any changes to retirement benefits must not violate the state constitution. While acknowledging the fiscal challenges facing Illinois, the court ruled that the 2014 Chicago pension reform law, known as Public Act 98-641, was unconstitutional because it attempted to reduce or alter public employees' guaranteed retirement benefits.

On March 24, the court delivered a unanimous 5-0 decision, stating that the reform law violated the constitutional pension protection clause. Justice Mary Jane Theis wrote the majority opinion, with Chief Justice Rita Garman and Justices Robert Thomas, Thomas Kilbride, and Lloyd Karmeier joining in. Justices Charles Freeman and Anne Burke chose not to participate in the ruling.

This decision upheld an earlier ruling by Cook County Circuit Judge Rita Novak, who had struck down the same reform law in 2015, finding it unconstitutional. The court reaffirmed that past attempts at pension reform have also failed to meet constitutional standards.

The original reform allowed the city of Chicago to change how pensions were funded, shifting some of the burden from property taxes to employee contributions. Under the previous system, employees contributed 8.5% of their salary, while the city matched that amount with a multiplier of 1 or 1.25 times. Retirees received annuities that increased by 3% annually, regardless of economic conditions. For those who started working after 2011, increases were tied to the Consumer Price Index.

However, financial analyses later showed that the city’s contributions were insufficient to sustain the pension funds. Without reform, the city projected that its pension funds—excluding police and firefighters—would become insolvent within 10 to 20 years. To address this, the Illinois General Assembly passed a new law requiring the city to increase its contributions to 90% of actuarial funding levels by 2021. It also gave pension funds the right to sue the city if it failed to meet these obligations.

In exchange, the city would have been allowed to increase employee contributions from 8.5% to a maximum of 11% by 2019. Once the funding ratio reached 90%, contributions could be reduced to 9.75%. Additionally, the law would have replaced the automatic 3% annual annuity increase with a different formula.

City employees and retirees challenged the law, arguing that it violated the pension protection clause of the Illinois Constitution, which states that public employee benefits "shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired." They claimed the reform amounted to a reduction in benefits, even if it came with promises of better long-term funding.

The city defended the reform by arguing that it would ultimately benefit workers and retirees by ensuring more stable funding for pensions. However, the court rejected this argument, stating that the reforms essentially asked employees to pay more and retirees to accept less, all in exchange for a promise that the city would fund pensions—a promise already required by the constitution.

The justices also pointed out that the 90% funding guarantee in the law was not a binding contract but rather a legal tool that allowed pension funds to sue the city. This meant retirees could only receive whatever the city could afford, not a guaranteed amount.

Furthermore, the court emphasized that the 2015 ruling against similar reforms still stands: a fiscal crisis does not justify violating the constitutional protection of pension benefits. Applying the same logic, the Chicago reform was also deemed invalid.

“This reasoning would lead to an absurd and unjust result,” the justices wrote. “The Illinois Constitution mandates that members of the Fund have a legally enforceable right to receive the benefits they have been promised—not merely to receive whatever happens to remain in the funds.”

The court also dismissed the city’s claim that the reform was the product of extensive negotiations with unions. While acknowledging the involvement of labor groups, the justices said that these discussions did not constitute a binding collective bargaining agreement. Therefore, individual retirees and employees had not given up their constitutional rights.

“These negotiations were no different than legislative advocacy on behalf of any interest group,” the court noted. “Individual members of the Funds have done nothing that could be said to have unequivocally assented to the new terms or to have ‘bargained away’ their constitutional rights.”

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