No. 23-2968 CARMEN CONSOLINO, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. THOMAS J. DART, Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, et al., Defendants-Appellees. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 17 C 9011 — Jorge L. Alonso, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED MAY 16, 2024 — DECIDED NOVEMBER 5, 2024 ____________________

Before EASTERBROOK, RIPPLE, and JACKSON-AKIWUMI, Cir- cuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. Among many duties, the Sher- iff of Cook County manages the Cook County Jail. Each of the Jail’s divisions has a superintendent plus multiple command- ers, lieutenants, sergeants, and guards (correctional officers). Rather, each division had commanders until late 2017, when all were laid off. Superintendents, lieutenants, sergeants, and guards remain. Six of the former commanders contend in this 2 No. 23-2968 suit under 42 U.S.C. §1983 that the layoffs violated their rights under the First Amendment, applied to the states by the Four- teenth. When the commanders were laid off, the Teamsters Union was conducting an organizing campaign. Unions represent about 90% of the Sheriff’s work force, but the Sheriff viewed commanders as part of management and opposed their or- ganization. On August 2, 2017, an administrative law judge recommended that the Illinois Labor Relations Board permit the Teamsters Union to represent the commanders in collec- tive bargaining. (Public employers are outside the scope of the National Labor Relations Act, see 29 U.S.C. §152(2), so only state law governs unions in state or local public employment.) Before the Board could act on this recommendation, a budget crunch arrived. The Cook County Board of Commis- sioners initially provided the Sheriff’s Office with a budget of $625 million for Fiscal Year 2018, though the Sheriff con- tended that the Office needed about $50 million more. In fall 2017 the County Board repealed a tax that it had counted on to support the $625 million budget. The Board’s staff told the Office that its revised FY 2018 budget would be $553 million, about $120 million less than the Sheriff thought necessary. That brought on a crisis, as FY 2018 was to begin on December 1, 2017, and the Office could not pay for all of its activities. Most of the expense of running the Office is payroll, so hun- dreds of positions had to be cut, in addition to achieving sav- ings in other ways. Teams throughout the Office discussed multiple plans for cutting payroll. One plan entailed firing all of the command- ers (the County Board’s staff supported this option, believing the Sheriff’s Office top-heavy in management); another called No. 23-2968 3 for eliminating the commanders’ positions and allowing the former commanders to “bump down” to lieutenant positions (with the displaced lieutenants bumping sergeants, and so on); other possible plans included thinning all ranks (e.g., go- ing from 25 commanders to 15, with similar cuts elsewhere). The Office ultimately concluded that removing all command- ers, a well-paid rank, was faster and less disruptive than thin- ning all ranks or bumping down—though plenty of other workers also had to go for the budget to balance. The County Board approved a revised budget on November 21, 2017, and the new budget did not provide for the employment of any commander. Their service ended on December 4, 2017. Three months later, the Illinois Labor Relations Board ruled that the commanders had been “supervisors” as state law defines that term, 5 ILCS 315/3(r), and therefore had lacked entitlement to engage in collective bargaining over management’s opposition. International Brotherhood of