The Illinois Appellate Court has affirmed a labor board’s dismissal of a petition seeking to represent police supervisors, holding the board correctly declined to analyze whether a new state constitutional amendment overrides a statutory ban on supervisory bargaining, as such constitutional questions are beyond its authority.
The Illinois Council of Police (Council) filed a petition with the Illinois Labor Relations Board seeking to represent all master sergeants employed by the Village of Bellwood police department. The Village objected, arguing that the master sergeants were statutory “supervisors” excluded from bargaining under Section 3(r) of the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act. The Council stipulated that the master sergeants met the statutory definition of supervisors but argued that the 2022 passage of the Workers’ Rights Amendment to the Illinois Constitution changed the analysis. The Amendment guarantees employees “the fundamental right to organize and to bargain collectively,” and the Council contended that this constitutional mandate required the Board to reexamine its historical exclusion of supervisors.
A Board administrative law judge recommended dismissing the petition based on the stipulation and existing law, without addressing the Amendment’s potential impact. The Board adopted the recommendation, concluding it “did not have the authority to analyze the constitutional impact that the [Amendment] had on the application of the Act’s provisions.”
On administrative review, the Council argued that the Board acted arbitrarily by refusing to use its expertise to consider how the Amendment affected its interpretation of the statute. The Council expressly did not ask the Court to decide the substantive issue but sought a remand to the Board for an initial determination.
The Appellate Court affirmed the Board’s dismissal. The Court held that under binding Illinois Supreme Court precedent, “administrative agencies such as [an] electoral board have no authority to declare statutes unconstitutional or even to question their validity” and “to make that determination, the Board would necessarily have been required to ‘question [the] validity’ of a statutory provision in light of a constitutional change,” the Court provided, an action expressly prohibited. The Court noted any such Board decision “would have been ‘a nullity’ and reversed on judicial review.”
The Council’s reliance on a prior Board declaratory ruling that included a due process analysis was distinguished, as that case involved whether agency action was arbitrary, not a direct challenge to a statute’s constitutionality. The Court emphasized that consideration of a constitutional amendment’s impact on a statute “is to be conducted on judicial review,” not by an agency. Since the Council limited its appeal to the procedural question and disavowed asking the Court to rule on the Amendment’s substantive effect, the Court expressed no opinion on that issue. It held only that the Board correctly recognized the question was outside its authority and properly dismissed the petition based on the unchallenged stipulation that the master sergeants were statutory supervisors.
Ill. Council of Police v. Ill. Labor Relations Bd., 2025 WL 2985660 (Ill. App. Ct. 3d Dist. Sept. 19, 2025).