Illinois schedules 51 corrective lotteries
The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation announced a schedule for 51 corrective lotteries as ordered by the Court on May 17, 2022. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul submitted plans to conduct the corrective lotteries over three days: June 21 (Qualifying Applicant Lottery), June 22 (Social Equity Justice Involved Lottery), and June 23 (Tied Applicant Lottery).
According to IDFPR, seventeen regional corrective lotteries will be held on each day for a total of 51. The Department’s corrective lottery plan includes six discrete stages.
Stage 1: In the first stage, the Department will identify the participants that it intends to include in the corrective lotteries. The Department intends to include in the corrective lotteries (1) all plaintiffs that claim they were wrongfully excluded from the original lotteries; (2) the six applicants that the Department has advised were inadvertently excluded from the original Qualifying Applicant Lottery; and (3) the Big City Ventures plaintiffs (applicants that currently have claims pending before Judge Demacopoulos). On May 25, 2022, the Department advised the six applicants that were inadvertently omitted from the original Qualifying Applicant Lottery that they would be included in the corrective lotteries unless they decline participation by June 10, 2022.
Stage 2: In the second stage, through June 10, 2022, applicants can address any claimed errors or opt out of the corrective lotteries. By June 10, 2022, any plaintiff that wishes to participate in the corrective lotteries should advise the Department, through its legal counsel with the Attorney General’s Office, of any alleged errors. The Department will investigate any errors and either reach an agreement with the plaintiff claiming the error, or seek court intervention if an agreement cannot be reached.
Stage 3: Once the opt outs are known and any claimed errors are addressed, the Department will publish, by June 17, 2022, the final lists of the participants’ entries to be included, along with blank entries, in each of the corrective lotteries. The final lists will resemble the lists of applicants that participated in the original lotteries. For each of the 51 corrective lotteries, the application entry for each participant will be identified with a unique application and lottery number. The remaining entries in each corrective lottery will consist of blank rows, with each blank row assigned a unique lottery number. The total number of entries in a particular corrective lottery for a region will be identical to the total number of entries in the parallel original lottery for that region. Therefore, each application entry in a corrective lottery will have the same chance of success that every application entry had in the corresponding original lottery, creating the same odds that existed in the original lotteries.
Stage 4: In stage four, the Department will conduct the corrective lotteries using officials from the Illinois Lottery, as was done in the original lotteries. The corrective lotteries will take place on the following dates: June 21 (the corrective Qualifying Applicant Lottery); June 22 (the corrective Social Equity Justice Involved Lottery); and June 23 (the corrective Tied Applicant Lottery). Seventeen separate corrective lotteries (one for each BLS region) will be held on each day, for a total of 51 corrective lotteries. As with the original lotteries, an independent external auditor from Stopp & VanHoy CPA and Business Advisors, LLC (“Stopp & Van Hoy”) (Creve Coeur, Missouri), will be present on each day in the lottery drawing room to ensure the integrity of the corrective lottery process. The Illinois Lottery, with the auditor present, will compile the final printed lottery drawings in envelopes and deliver them to the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation.
Stage 5: At the end of each day of corrective lotteries, the Department will receive from the Illinois Lottery 17 envelopes with the lottery drawings for each of the regional corrective lotteries conducted that day. The Department will use four teams to review and prepare the final list of winners using the following process:
Team 1 will consist of two officials who will open an envelope correlated to a particular corrective lottery and read aloud each unique lottery number with a winning position in the corrective lottery.
Team 2 will consist of two officials who will listen to the unique lottery numbers read by Team 1, match each unique lottery number with either an applicant’s name or a blank entry, and read aloud the name or blank entry.
Team 3 will consist of two officials who will listen to the results announced by Team 2 and will make sure that the unique lottery number matches the name of the winning applicant or blank entry.
Team 4 will enter the unique lottery number and applicant name (or blank entry) into a Lottery Results List.
At the end of each day’s lottery drawings, the Department will publish on its website the final Lottery Results List for that day. In addition, the Department will publish the official lottery drawing records on its website on June 23, 2022, after conducting all 51 corrective lotteries. Also on June 23, 2022, the Department will file into the record in this consolidated preceding the final Lottery Results List for all 51 corrective lotteries.
After the filing of the final Lottery Results List, those applicants that do not prevail in the corrective lotteries should be given one week, until June 30, 2022, to determine whether they will voluntarily dismiss their actions, or whether they will continue to litigate the merits of their legal claims. The Department reserves the right to seek dismissal of these plaintiffs’ legal claims where appropriate, including on grounds of mootness.
For those applicants that are successful in the corrective lotteries, the Department, after further investigating the merits of those applicants’ legal claims, will determine whether it will object to the legal claims or confess error.
The Court has scheduled a status hearing on July 7, 2022 at 8 a.m. to discuss next steps, including setting a schedule to brief the legal claims that remain at issue.
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