Madigan wasn’t a plaintiff in the lawsuit that doomed the Independent Map Amendment, but as the chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party and a vocal opponent of this and an earlier redistricting reform effort, his fingerprints were all over it.

Also troubling to many supporters was the fact that the seven member Illinois Supreme Court, who are elected to the bench, split along party lines, with Democrats carrying the majority in a 4-3 decision.

While pundits portrayed Madigan as everything from a monarch to a despot to a fighter in a rigged match, the most stinging criticism of the decision came from the court itself, with all three Republican justices writing dissents.

In the most stinging dissent, Justice Bob Thomas said the decision nullified the part of the state constitution that’s supposed to give citizens a way to keep the power of the Legislature in check.

“…(T)he majority has irrevocably severed a vital lifeline created by the drafters for the express purpose of enabling later generations of Illinoisans to use their sovereign authority as a check against self-interest by the legislature,” Thomas writes. “When the Reporter of Decisions sends out the majority’s disposition, he should include a bright orange warning sticker for readers to paste over article XIV, section 3, of their personal copies of the 1970 Constitution reading, ‘Out of Service.'”

The ruling did no less than stifle democracy and replace it with judicial fiat, Thomas writes.

“Today a muzzle has been placed on the people of this State, and their voices supplanted with judicial fiat,” writes Thomas. “The whimper you hear is democracy stifled. I join that muted chorus of dissent.”

There’s still hope for a system that removes the politics from drawing legislative district boundaries in Illinois. But the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling made one thing abundantly clear. It’s probably not going happen until Michael Madigan wants it to.