Walker v. Chasteen

Section 15-1504.1 of Code of Civil Procedure created a $50 filing fee for residential mortgage foreclosure cases.Sections 7.30 and 7.31 of the Illinois Housing Development Act Act created programs funded by the fee created in section 1504.1. These statutes violate the free access clause because the $50 fee unreasonably interferes with foreclosure litigants' access to the courts. There is no rational basis for imposing this filing fee on mortgage foreclosure litigants, while excluding other classes of taxpayers from the burden. The $50 filing charge is not a "fee" but a litigation tax, and it has no direct relation to expenses of a petitioner's litigation and no relation to the services rendered, but is assessed solely to raise revenue for the Foreclosure Prevention Fund and the Abandoned Residential Property Fund. (A. BURKE, GARMAN, M. BURKE, and OVERSTREET, concurring; THIS, dissenting.)