An Illinois county is looking to secede from the state and join Missouri, but the Illinois attorney general is pushing back on the plans, stating that any referendum on the issue would have no legal effect.
Jersey County, along with other Republican-leaning counties located in downstate Illinois, has been contemplating whether to break away from Democratic-dominated areas and join Missouri. Located north of St. Louis, Jersey County has a population of 21,500, and the county seat is Jerseyville.
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Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said in an Oct. 17 legal opinion that non-home-rule counties such as Jersey County do not have “the authority to secede from the State of Illinois and join another state.” He said Jersey County only has the powers granted to it by the state constitution, so there would need to be a review of the Illinois Constitution to “determine whether non-home-rule counties are authorized to secede from the State of Illinois and potentially affiliate with another state.”
Raoul said Illinois’s constitution does not directly address county secession or the alteration of the Illinois border by other means. Some articles of the constitution handle issues merging and consolidating land between existing counties, but that would not apply in this case.
“Unlike other changes to the configuration of county boundaries contemplated by article VII, section 2(a), that occur wholly within the State’s borders, secession would remove territory from the State’s possession and control and affect the entire State’s border,” Raoul wrote.
The attorney general added that secession is not granted through the Counties Code nor the Election Code, either.
“There is no Illinois law that provides for a legally binding referendum on the question of county secession,” Raoul said. “While county boards are authorized to submit for consideration an ‘advisory question of public policy[,]’ which might permit counties to ask constituents for their opinion on secession-related topics, a vote on the subject would have no binding effect.”
Illinois is not the only state to have counties wishing to secede and join states that represent their ideological leaning. In Oregon, 12 counties have voted in favor of breaking away from the Democratic-controlled state to join Idaho. Most Democrats oppose the idea of the eastern Oregon counties joining Idaho, while some Republicans have spoken in favor of it.
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Like in Oregon, any county attempting to secede from Illinois would have to go through both the current and desired states’ legislatures, as well as the United States Congress. No new states have been created since Hawaii in 1959.
At least two dozen Illinois counties, primarily concentrated in the southeastern portion of the state, have passed “separation referendums” dating to 2020, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The talk in Illinois became more common following the 2020 election after now-President Joe Biden won the state’s electoral votes despite only 13 of the state’s 102 counties voting Democratic.
