Winnebago County will remain part of a multi-county lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the SAFE-T Act after State’s Attorney J. Hanley considered dropping out of the lawsuit.
The state’s attorney’s office announced the county would remain in the lawsuit on Monday.
Hanley told the Rockford Register Star last week he was considering withdrawing his name from the suit after Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a series of amendments to the SAFE-T Act.
“The amended law is an improvement – but its passage and its language still offend our Constitution. As such, Winnebago County will remain in the lawsuit. This is consistent with the oath I took to defend the Illinois Constitution,” Hanley said in a statement Monday.
More:Rockford-area state’s attorney contemplates dropping out of SAFE-T Act lawsuit
The case has been consolidated in Kankakee County, Illinois. It is expected that the assigned judge will make a decision on the law’s constitutionality prior to the end of the year, according to Hanley.
Monday’s announcement comes less than a week after Hanley said he regrets if any of his comments leading up to the Nov. 8 elections contributed to the “hysteria” over the elimination of the cash bail system on Jan. 1, 2023.
Hanley also spoke of his widely read guest column which ran into the Rockford Register Star in September. The opinion piece outlined what Hanley described as shortcomings in the law, particularly its most controversial provision, the Pretrial Fairness Act, which eliminates cash bail.
Hanley, a Republican, said he does not regret writing the op-ed, but said, “I do regret to any extent that I contributed to that kind of (misinformation) hysteria.”
He added, “It was an important lesson for me. Maybe I was a little bit naive in how I message things, particularly when advocating for legislation.”
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