Major Initiatives

• Cracked down on the student loan debt industry, filing lawsuits against companies that prey on those struggling to pay off student loan debt, exposed fraudulent practices of student lenders, shut down predatory for-profit colleges and secured millions in relief for their students, launched a student debt loan helpline in Illinois to help borrowers understand their options and avoid student loan debt scammers and passed a Student Loan Bill of Rights in Illinois to better protect student borrowers and their families.
• Enforced the environmental laws, fighting for strong regulations to combat global climate change, and advocating for environmental justice for communities impacted by pollution.
• Led national multistate investigations into major data breaches at Equifax, Target, Michaels Stores, Sony, eBay, Jimmy John’s and JP Morgan Chase to protect individuals’ privacy. Initiated the country’s first Identity Theft Hotline in an Attorney General’s Office with a dedicated staff of trained advocates and attorneys, helping over 44,000 identity theft victims to remove over $29 million in fraudulent charges from their credit.
• Became the only state Attorney General’s Office to establish a unit of trained housing counselors dedicated to providing hands on assistance to struggling homeowners through a Homeowner Helpline and recovered over $3.1
• Protected consumers from unfair utility bills and held utilities accountable for rate hikes, securing more than $2.1 billion in rate relief for electricity customers.
• Created a Workplace Rights Bureau in the Office of the Attorney General to ensure individuals’ employment rights are being protected.
• Increased government transparency and accountability by (1) creating the first-ever Public Access Counselor within the Office of the Attorney General to review and resolve potential violations of the state’s most critical open government laws; (2) creating a Public Integrity Unit within the Office to coordinate with criminal and civil attorneys to investigate and litigate cases involving government misconduct, fraud, abuse and waste; and (3) strengthening the Freedom of Information Act and the Open Meetings Act.
• Successfully advocated to amend the Illinois Constitution to strengthen the rights of crime victims.
• Created “Operation Guardian” to conduct unannounced inspections of nursing homes to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations and to remove residents with outstanding arrest warrants.
• Initiated “Operation Glass House” and oversees the Illinois Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC), which has been involved in the arrest of over 1,500 sexual predators and investigating and arresting the most prolific child pornography traders in Illinois.
• Working with the Illinois Department of Revenue, established an ongoing probe into businesses that have evaded gasoline sales taxes, resulting in the recovery of $110 million in State revenue and criminal charges against gas station owners and operators for tax evasion.
• Led the nation in reforming the way law enforcement responds to sexual assault crimes, including training over 1,500 nurses to become Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners.
• Launched “Operation Smoked Out” to conduct retail store sweeps for dangerous synthetic drugs, netting more than 31,000 packages of synthetic drugs with a street value of nearly $689,000.
• Successfully sought to revoke pensions for corrupt former Governors Rod Blagojevich and George Ryan.

Legislative Victories

• Initiated and worked to pass a Student Loan Bill of Rights in Illinois to better protect student borrowers and their families.
• Successfully worked to eliminate the criminal statutes of limitations for sex crimes against children.
• Strengthened the Illinois Hate Crimes Act.
• Joined forces with prosecutors, advocates and law makers to pass legislation that will encourage victims of sexual violence to report crimes, require training for law enforcement and allow survivors to pursue justice.
• Championed The Preventing Sexual Violence in Higher Education Act, landmark legislation that will ensure that all Illinois colleges and universities take the proper steps to develop clear and comprehensive campus sexual violence policies.
• Initiated and worked to pass a bill that, with a patient’s consent, allows video and audio monitoring devices in nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities.
• Guaranteed Victims’ Rights by supporting a constitutional amendment to ensure victims of violent crime have a voice in the courts.
• Advocated to protect business owners from the costly, frivolous lawsuits and deceptive demand letters of “patent trolls” who seek high settlement costs from bogus patent infringement claims.
• Protected children’s health by allowing training persons to administer epinephrine auto-injectors (EpiPens) to students who have life threatening allergic reactions to food at school.
• Fought to prevent low-income workers from losing their wages to unfair and excessive fees on payroll cards.
• Strengthened protections for homeowners facing default and foreclosure by drafting the Homeowners’ Bill of Rights Act.
• Reigned in abusive practices by mortgage brokers, requiring that they put borrowers’ financial interests ahead of their own, by drafting a law to mandate that they verify and document a borrower’s ability to repay the mortgage before selling it to them.
• Drafted the Illinois Mortgage Rescue Fraud Act to protect homeowners from losing their homes in foreclosure rescue scams and loan modification schemes.
• Drafted and negotiated legislation to ban cramming, prohibiting third-party vendors from placing unauthorized charges for products and services on consumers’ and business’ landline telephone bills.
• Authored the Debtors’ Rights Act, which prevents individuals from being jailed over unpaid debts that they justifiably cannot pay.
• Drafted a law amending the Tax Refund Anticipation Loan Reform Act to provide greater protections for consumers from the high costs of tax refund anticipation loans and refund anticipation checks.
• Drafted a law to prohibit debt settlement companies from engaging in unfair and abusive practices with the goal of bilking financially strapped customers by prohibiting these companies from charging upfront fees.
• Drafted legislation that curbs the sale of dangerous synthetic drugs.
• Worked with consumer advocates and legislators to cap interest rates on consumer installment loans, eliminating interest rates as high as 1,000 percent.
• Strengthened child pornography laws to make it easier to investigate and prosecute criminals who trade in child pornography.
• Curbed the production and use of methamphetamine in Illinois by drafting legislation to restrict the sale of the pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient in meth, including creating a statewide electronic database that allows pharmacies to block illegal sales of pseudoephedrine.
• Amended the Line of Duty Compensation Act to ensure that the families of our military men and women who die in the line of duty gain access to information about pending compensation claims and receive the benefits to which they are entitled.
• Drafted and negotiated the passage of the Illinois Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Act, resulting in Illinois being the first state in the country to mandate that law enforcement agencies submit the DNA evidence from rape kits for lab testing and to require analysis of the kit within six months of receipt.
• Negotiated changes to strengthen Illinois’ stalking and cyberstalking laws to better protect victims of stalking crimes.
• Drafted the Fair Patient Billing Act, ensuring that patients have the rights to obtain more detailed billing information, to receive notice regarding financial assistance and to negotiate a payment plan.
• Drafted and negotiated the Hospital Uninsured Patient Discount Act, which requires that hospitals significantly reduce charges for the uninsured and place an annual cap on the total amount they can bill the uninsured.
• Authored the Resident’s Right to Know Act that requires nursing homes to complete an annual report detailing the facility’s standard of care, service and security issues to provide better information to residents and their families.
• Drafted and worked to pass legislation to strengthen the criminal laws to require lifetime supervision for sexual predators and mandate more stringent conditions of supervision for sex offenders when they complete their prison sentences.
• In addition to suing the Village of Crestwood and local officials for failing to provide safe drinking water and knowingly providing false information to village residents and the IEPA, Attorney General Madigan drafted and successfully negotiated the passage of a new law that requires prompt notification to all users when drinking water is contaminated.
• Advocated for Congress to pass the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Act to add sexual orientation, gender and gender identity to federal hate crime laws.

Litigation Achievements & Fiscal Stewardship

Lisa Madigan's legal actions have held companies and people accountable and generated critical revenue for our state.

• Recovered more than $13 billion for the State of Illinois through litigation and collection efforts.
• Obtained over $3.2 in relief for Illinois homeowners, communities and state pension funds from the mortgage crisis.
• Protected consumers from unfair utility bills and held utilities accountable for rate hikes, securing more than $2.1 billion in rate relief for electricity customers.
• In an effort to achieve real police reform, filed a lawsuit to obtain a consent decree to address the findings of its investigation into the Chicago Police Department
• Filed suit against Navient (formerly Sallie Mae) for unjustly treating student borrowers in Illinois and for-profit colleges for engaging in deceptive practices that left students in a lifetime of debt for almost useless degrees, including $11.6 million in relief for ex-Corinthian College students, $15 million for victims of national for-profit Westwood College and $3 million in relief for students who attended schools operated by Education Management Corporation (EDMC).
• Won the largest civil verdict in the history of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office -- $334 million – in a suit against a Medicaid HMO, Amerigroup, for illegally avoiding offering coverage to pregnant women and others with expensive health conditions.
• Reached a number of national settlements with banks and financial corporations for their roles in assigning high ratings to risky mortgage-backed security investments and contributing to the financial meltdown of the national housing market, including a $1.375 billion national settlement with Standard and Poor’s (S&P) and a $864 million national settlement with Moody’s.
• Reached a settlement with Jimmy John’s who was unjustly inserting non-compete agreements into its contracts with its employees, including sandwich makers and delivery drivers.
• Secured, with 19 other state attorneys general, a $2.5 million settlement with QuinStreet over allegations that its website, www.GIBill.com, deceptively marketed itself as operated or endorsed by the U.S. government or military and steered U.S. service members and veterans to use their federal educational benefits in the for-profit schools industry.
• In conjunction with the U.S. Department of Justice, reached the largest settlement of a fair lending lawsuit in history – a $335 million settlement with Bank of America over allegations of Countrywide’s discriminatory lending practices against minority borrowers.
• Sued Wells Fargo for discriminating against African American and Latino homeowners by selling them higher-cost loans, making Attorney General Madigan the first attorney general in the country to sue a national bank for discriminatory lending practices and resulting in a $175 million joint settlement with the US Department of Justice.
• Sued Countrywide for predatory lending and, as a result, spearheaded the $8.7 billion national settlement that forced the company to renegotiate mortgages for hundreds of thousands of homeowners.
• Successfully argued before the US Supreme Court in Illinois v. Caballes, making Attorney General Madigan the first Attorney General in Illinois to argue in the Court in decades.
• Obtained settlements with five financial institutions to violating antitrust laws through municipal bond bid rigging schemes, the will result in Illinois nonprofits and governmental entities that issued bonds to fund capital projects and sought to invest the money and manage the interest rate risk receiving $9.75 million.
• Obtained a landmark consent decree requiring Walgreens to modify all of its stores to ensure access for people with disabilities.
• Reached a comprehensive settlement with AMC Theaters to provide personal captioning services and audio description devices for movie-goers with hearing and vision disabilities at all of its Illinois theaters.
• Filed a lawsuit with Equip for Equality against the Illinois High School Association to ensure student athletes with disabilities have equal access and the opportunity to compete in high school sports competitions throughout the state.
• Achieved the largest environmental settlement in state history in a case against Dynegy Midwest Generation and Illinois Power, requiring Dynegy to spend more than $500 million to control air pollution emissions from five Illinois coal-fired power plants and including $15 million in supplemental environmental projects.
• Enforced the environmental laws, fighting for strong regulations to combat global climate change and advocated for environmental justice for communities impacted by pollution, including successfully resolving a Clean Air Act case against Archer Daniels Midland, requiring the company to spend more than $88 million on pollution reduction projects at its facilities in the state.
• Prosecuted over 500 cases to ensure the most dangerous sex offenders are not released into communities and ensure they are civilly committed under the Sexually Violent Persons Commitment Act.
• Revoked the State’s 10th casino license.
• Successfully prosecuted local, county and state public officials across Illinois for misconduct.
• Initiated the State investigation under former Governor Blagojevich.
• Sued and shut down a nursing home that was repeatedly violating patient safety and care requirements.