A years-long battle over how Chicago handles its most serious police misconduct cases reaches the Illinois Supreme Court Thursday, with the justices preparing to hear arguments over whether disciplinary proceedings involving officers facing termination or lengthy suspensions must remain open to the public.
At the center of the case is a dispute between the city and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 over whether officers accused of serious misconduct can choose arbitration instead of having their cases decided by the Chicago Police Board. The case does not simply concern who decides an officers fate. It also asks whether those proceedings can happen outside public view.
For decades, serious disciplinary cases have been handled by the Police Board through public proceedings. Arbitration involving municipal employees, however, has traditionally occurred privately.
A Cook County judge ruled in 2024 that officers could choose arbitration but that proceedings involving the most serious discipline must remain public. An appellate court upheld that finding in 2025, concluding that closing those proceedings would conflict with established public policy favoring transparency in serious police disciplinary cases.
The legal fight has effectively frozen part of Chicagos disciplinary system for more than two years. Thirty-one cases remain unresolved while the Illinois Supreme Court considers the dispute, including cases in which the city is seeking to terminate officers accused of serious misconduct.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has urged the court to preserve public proceedings, arguing in a friend-of-the-court brief that moving serious disciplinary hearings behind closed doors could undermine transparency requirements connected to Chicagos federal police consent decree. The decree resulted from a U.S. Department of Justice investigation following the 2014 police killing of Laquan McDonald and requires extensive reforms to CPD policies, training, supervision and accountability.
The police union takes a different position. FOP President John Catanzara has argued that Chicago officers should have the same arbitration rights available to other municipal employees and that state labor law supports resolving disciplinary disputes through arbitration.
The Illinois Supreme Court will also consider whether the city can stop paying officers facing serious misconduct allegations while their disciplinary proceedings are pending. With the existing backlog already stretching years, the eventual ruling could determine not only how future cases are heard, but how quickly Chicago can restart a disciplinary process that has largely been stalled.
Oral arguments are scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 24. A ruling is expected later and could reshape the process used to handle some of the Chicago Police Departments most consequential misconduct cases.