Paschal v. Jackson

BAUER, Chief Judge In a second appeal of this case, we are asked to determine whether the State of Illinois' sovereign immunity bars an award of benefits to two classes of unemployment insurance claimants. Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the claimants challenged the method by which the Illinois Department of Employment Security (""IDES"") administered two unemployment insurance programs: the extended benefits (""EB"") program, which pays benefits during periods of sufficiently high unemployment to claimants who have exhausted their regular benefits (which last up to twenty-six weeks), and the federal supplemental compensation (""FSC"") program, which paid benefits during the recession in the early 1980s to otherwise eligible unemployment insurance claimants who had exhausted their regular benefits and any extended benefits. In the first appeal, we held that the claimants had proven at trial two due process violations. Cosby v. Ward, 843 F.2d 967 (7th Cir. 1988). They established that IDES had failed to give claimants adequate notice of their work search responsibilities and had failed to provide claimants with notice of the issues to be determined at claims adjudicators' interviews and referees' hearings. Id. at 985-86. Because the district court terminated the trial after the claimants had presented their case and before the defendants had a chance to offer a case in rebuttal, we remanded the matter back to the district court for another proceeding.