The Issue
Since 2015, Illinois law has prohibited pension fund investments in businesses that boycott or divest from the State of Israel for any reason, including ethical or human rights concerns.
This ban on boycotts is a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. Based on a 1982 unanimous Supreme Court decision about boycotts, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups support boycotts as a form of "speech, assembly, and petition." Because this decision was made in favor of the NAACP, the right to boycott applies to individuals, groups, and organizations.
This Rauner Era Illinois law ensures that the State of Israel is the only country that is protected against boycott. Other countries are, in fact, boycotted in pension fund investment because of human rights violations. Illinois law REQUIRES that Iran, Sudan, Russia, and Belarus are boycotted because of aggression and human rights violations.
This law means that Israel is protected against the kind of economic boycott pressure that was successful in the movement against South African apartheid, the Montgomery bus boycott for civil rights, and the farmworkers’ struggle for labor rights. Those who want to bring similar non-violent economic pressure against Israel’s ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people are denied this historically effective tool.
This law violates the fiduciary responsibility of Illinois to its pension holders. One analysis of the Illinois anti-boycott law by the Illinois Coalition for Human Rights shows that companies that were banned from investment cost the Illinois pension fund approximately $149 million in foregone returns. Oak Park residents have state pensions - so this is both a state and local issue.
This law means that state pension money can't be invested in companies that won't do business in either Israel or the illegal settlements. For example. Ben & Jerry's stopped selling ice cream in illegally occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank . So Illinois divested state pension money from their parent company, Unilever. Unilever had to spin off its ice cream business to be taken off the boycott list. Protecting Israel from constitutionally-protected economic boycott has no place in the state’s fiduciary responsibility to our state pension recipients.
37 members of the Illinois General Assembly have co-sponsored a bill to repeal the law protecting the State of Israel from boycott, but our elected representatives have not yet supported it.