Crime & Law
Fate of Chicago Police Reform Push at Stake Ahead of Illinois Supreme Court Arguments: Attorney General
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul appears on “Chicago Tonight” on Aug. 11, 2026. (WTTW News)
Unless the Illinois Supreme Court upholds a ruling that Chicago police officers accused of serious misconduct must have their fate determined during public proceedings, the more than seven-year effort to reform the Chicago Police Department will fail, Attorney General Kwame Raoul warned.
A ruling by the Illinois Supreme Court siding with the city’s largest police union — which would allow an arbitrator to determine behind closed doors whether officers accused of the most egregious misconduct should be terminated — would result in a “loss of public trust in CPD,” Raoul wrote in a friend of the court brief filed June 2.
The Illinois Supreme Court will hold oral arguments at 9 a.m. Thursday in the case that has frozen the system Chicago officials used for 60 years to hold accountable officers accused of the most egregious misconduct amid a legal dispute between the city and the city’s largest police union that has lasted for more than two years.
Attorneys for the city are expected to argue that Chicagoans have a right to know what happens to officers accused of the most serious misconduct, while police union lawyers are set to tell the justices that Chicago police officers should be treated no differently than other municipal employees facing termination or lengthy suspensions and have those decisions made in private.
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said the right of public sector employees to have allegations of misconduct resolved by an arbitrator in private is well established in state law, according to initial and final arguments filed with the Illinois Supreme Court.
Raoul, whose predecessor sued the city to force it to agree to federal court oversight of CPD, is responsible for enforcing the federal court order known as the consent decree, which requires CPD to stop routinely violating Black and Latino residents’ constitutional rights.
For more than seven years, Raoul and Chicago leaders have been working to implement the requirements of the consent decree, which were crafted in an effort to put an end to the decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality that have defined CPD and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The murder of Laquan McDonald by former Officer Jason Van Dyke prompted a probe by the U.S. Department of Justice that found serious problems with the way CPD operated, including “a widespread lack of transparency in disciplinary matters, which undermined public confidence in CPD,” Raoul told the seven-member Supreme Court, which includes five Democrats.
Raoul, who is a Democrat, is running for reelection in November.
“Moving hearings in serious police disciplinary matters outside of public view would undermine the consent decree,” Raoul wrote. “It is the attorney general’s goal to ensure — consistent with the consent decree — that CPD acts in as transparent and accountable a manner as is practicable. The arbitration award in this case, if affirmed, would represent a profound step backward in that mission. It would decrease transparency in the most serious disciplinary cases — those most likely to attract the public’s interest and to shape its perception of CPD. Moving those proceedings behind closed doors would undermine the public’s faith in the disciplinary process and in CPD generally.”
Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell and Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and one of the attorneys representing the coalition of community groups that also sued the city to force it to agree to the consent decree, told the Supreme Court that “the stakes of this appeal could not be greater.”
“They include the right of the public to monitor the police, CPD transparency and accountability, the ability of the state and people of Illinois to remedy a pattern and practice of Illinois and federal constitutional violations by CPD, and the very safety of the people of Chicago,” Mitchell and Futterman wrote in their friend-of-court brief filed June 2.
CPD has fully completed just 25% of the consent decree’s requirements, according to the most recent measurement of the department’s efforts to comply with the court-ordered reforms.
“While far from sufficient, the city had made real progress toward transparency and police accountability in the years following the release of the horrific video of Laquan McDonald’s murder,” Futterman and Mitchell wrote. “This progress now threatens to unravel.”
Allowing serious misconduct hearings to take place behind closed doors would allow CPD “to perpetuate a pattern of constitutional violations without accountability,” Futterman and Mitchell wrote.
“Oversight is critical,” Futterman and Mitchell wrote.
Until the Supreme Court rules, 31 cases will remain in limbo — including three that seek to terminate officers who caused the deaths of Chicagoans, including the officer who shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo in 2021, records show.
The most recent officer to face termination is Officer Joseph Vecchio, who made false statements under oath about two separate traffic stops, former CPD Supt. Larry Snelling and the Chicago Police Board concluded, records show.
Four other officers face lengthy suspensions or terminations for using excessive force against members of the public, police board records show.
In August 2025, an appeals court upheld Cook County Judge Michael Mullen’s March 2024 ruling that allowing cases that could result in officers being fired or suspended for more than a year to take place behind closed doors goes “against a dominant and well-defined public policy.”
That decision upheld the effort backed by the city’s largest police union to upend Chicago’s police disciplinary system but affirmed a ruling that rejected the Fraternal Order of Police’s demand that an arbitrator decide behind closed doors whether officers facing serious allegations of misconduct should be terminated or suspended for more than a year.
The Chicago Police Board holds its meetings in public and allows input from Chicagoans, while arbitrations traditionally take place behind closed doors and are not open to public scrutiny.
Once the legal fight is over, it will likely take months for city officials to set up a new system to work through the backlog of cases.
The Supreme Court will also decide whether the city can stop paying officers accused of serious misconduct while the disciplinary process continues.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
