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Lawmakers filed a pair of bills that would prohibit school officials from issuing fines or fees to students as punishment.
House Bill 2502 and Senate Bill 1519 follow the findings of a yearlong investigation by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune.
The investigation found that schools ticket students for in-schools behavior, even though Illinois law bans school officials from fining students themselves. Instead, they have law enforcement officials issue tickets to students in schools for violating local ordinances.
The investigation found 11,800 tickets were issued to students between 2019 and 2021, and Black students were twice as likely to be ticketed than their white peers.
Breonna Roberts, co-chair of Faith Coalition’s Education task force, called that disproportional ticketing a “punishment of poverty.”
“Psychologists have long warned about the devastating effects of labeling children at a young age,” Roberts said. “When students are repeatedly treated like criminals, they start to internalize that identity.”
State Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, who sponsored the bill in the House, said fees and fines don’t address the underlying issues for which students are ticketed. Instead, he said he thinks school-based discipline, educational programming and restorative justice programs should be used.
“If the student is caught vaping, what benefit to the student is there to have the student get a ticket? The benefit is recognizing that there may be a problem and possibly referring the student to help,” Ford said. “And so, our goal is to help students and not lead them down a path of what we all have heard, the school prison pipeline.”
Aimee Galvin, government affairs director of Stand for Children Illinois, said the bill would only prohibit fines and fees given for municipal ordinance violations, most of which she said have been for vaping or disorderly conduct.
“Bringing a cellphone to a classroom, that’s not a municipal ordinance violation,” Galvin said. “Being late to class, not a municipal ordinance violation. Assaulting a teacher, not a municipal ordinance violation. That’s a serious crime, in which case school districts would still be allowed to engage with police for a serious crime like that and with guns, weapon, and drugs.”
Bills for breastfeeding moms
Senate Bill 212 would entitle working Illinois mothers to a 30-minute paid break to pump breastmilk and breastfeed.
The bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Laura Fine, D-Glenview, said during a news conference Tuesday she personally would have benefitted from the bill becoming law when she had children.
“I know for me, we did not have the generosity of these rules and regulations to allow me to take that break to take care of my child,” Fine said. “So, it would be hiding in a bathroom, um getting away when you possibly could and actually having to stop breastfeeding early when it couldn’t work out.”
Fine said the business owners she’s spoken to about the bill had a positive reaction.
CheVaughn Starling-Jones, a Springfield resident who gave birth last month, said the bill would be helpful for raising her second child.
“I had to stop my plans, my grandiose plans, for breastfeeding with my first because it was just too much – working and breastfeeding,” Starling-Jones said. “So, I’m hoping the second time around is a little bit better, but it is a huge strain on working moms. And in this economy, you have to work.”
If a physician prescribes hypoallergenic baby formula to a child, it would be covered by the state’s Medicaid program under another bill.
Bill sponsor state Sen. Doris Turner, D-Springfield, said Senate Bill 206 was inspired by a conversation with one of her constituents who had to pay $60 for a three-day supply of hypoallergenic formula.
Turner said some parents may already qualify for Food Assistance for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, which covers some types of specialized formulas. However, the type of formula a doctor prescribes might not be covered by the WIC program.
House GOP criticisms
House Republicans called for a repeal of the TRUST Act, which lawmakers passed in 2017 to stop local law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal immigration laws.
House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, criticized the TRUST Act, as well as Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for not cooperating with Congress’s request for information on Chicago’s sanctuary city policies.
“Sorry boys, you invited this into Illinois,” McCombie said. “If the governor and Mayor Johnson can’t or won’t solve this crisis, the Illinois House Republicans have solutions and will lead.”
House Republicans called on the Illinois House immigration committee to hold hearings to answer questions about the status of illegal immigration in Illinois, including how much the TRUST Act and sanctuary policies cost and how they’ve affected law enforcement.
Gov. JB Pritzker on Tuesday said changes to the TRUST Act are not top of mind in the wake of the Trump Administration.
“Donald Trump’s administration is attacking working families and the middle class and the most vulnerable in our state, and so we want to do everything we can to protect them,” he said at an unrelated news conference. “Whether that’s within our budget and our means or that’s something we can change in law to make sure that we’re ensuring that those federal dollars come to the state of Illinois.”
Retail study
Retail accounts for more than 10% of Illinois’ gross domestic product, according to the results of a study released Tuesday.
Rob Karr, president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, which commissioned the study, said retailers are essential to the state’s economy.
“What makes this study so special is that it is the first analysis of its kind that we’re aware of in Illinois to truly quantify the widespread economic impact that retail has throughout Illinois,” Karr said. “And the findings were clear: The retail sector is the cornerstone of the state’s economy and crucial to our everyday lives.”
The study was conducted by the University of Cincinnati Economics Center using 2022 data.
According to the study, retail generated $7.3 billion in income and sales tax revenue in 2022.
“Retail generates the second-largest revenue for the state of Illinois and the largest for local governments,” Karr said. “What does that mean? When retail succeeds, Illinois succeeds.”
Since 1.3 million people work in retail in Illinois, that makes the industry the state’s largest private sector employer – employing one out of every four workers in Illinois. Karr said that number equals the number of people employed in health care and manufacturing combined.
“The breadth and depth of the retail sector is wide,” Karr said. Karr said the looming threat of President Donald Trump imposing tariffs on imported goods from Canada, Mexico, and China “introduces tremendous uncertainty” in the retail industry. Tariffs would leave retailers in the lurch and could lead to higher prices, he said.
“Price increases and inflation always impact people in terms of their shopping powers,” he said. “And again, we can’t bake everything into the price. We just have a limited ability to do that, because there is a point at which any product a consumer won’t pay for.”
At a separate news conference Tuesday, Pritzker echoed Karr’s statement about Trump-imposed tariffs causing “uncertainty.”
“We’re deeply concerned about that and the effect that it’ll have on businesses and jobs across the state of Illinois,” he said.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.