Plaintiff ran a bar in the Chicago suburbs, and police got 911 calls about a large fight inside. When they arrived and sorted it out, the Mayor, under the authority of the Illinois liquor control law, ordered the liquor license seized for the evening. Liquor licenses are pervasively regulated, and this unilateral seizure was authorized by Illinois law. \u201cThe Court declines to venture any further into this thicket. The obvious ambiguities here cry out for the application of qualified immunity, which \u2018protects police officers who reasonably interpret an unclear statute.\u2019 … The Court’s \u2018inquiry is aimed at determining whether a reasonable person in the officer’s position would have understood his actions to be against the law at the time he acted,\u2019 … and a reasonable officer in Lacey’s position could have easily concluded, given the obvious threats to the Village’s welfare posed by Lilah’s on the morning of March 15, 2015, that they were empowered to seize the License under the Act.\u201d Lilah’s, Inc. v. Lacey, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48801 (N.D. Ill. March 31, 2017).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plaintiff ran a bar in the Chicago suburbs, and police got 911 calls about a large fight inside. When they arrived and sorted it out, the Mayor, under the authority of the Illinois liquor control law, ordered the liquor license … Continue reading