A lawsuit filed by a civic advocacy organizations claims state agencies and law enforcement agencies have kept the public “largely in the dark” about the outcomes of cash bail abolishment under the SAFE-T Act.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in Cook County by attorneys with the civil rights law firm Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center.

The attorneys are representing the Better Government Association and Radical Hospitality Ministries.

A provision of the SAFE-T Act requires a state agency called the Pretrial Practices Data Oversight Board to collect quarterly, county-level pretrial data, oversee the analysis of that data and publish it on the website for the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, according to the lawsuit.

The data is “essential” to measure whether the law has “achieved its intended purpose” of reducing the “harms of pretrial jailing and electronic monitoring,” as well as the “overall performance” of the law in response to “claims that it has negatively affected public safety,” according to the lawsuit.

But the lawsuit claims the oversight board and the state court office has “failed to gather and analyze the overwhelming majority” of pretrial data from sheriff’s offices and court systems in Will, Kankakee and DuPage counties.

“Defendants are intentionally flouting a legislative mandate to ensure that the new pretrial criminal legal system operates with full transparency,” the lawsuit alleged.

The public is “largely in the dark about the outcomes of the historic change” enacted by the Pretrial Fairness Act, the provision under the SAFE-T Act which abolished cash bail for defendants, according to the lawsuit.

The Better Government Association is a nonprofit watchdog organization pursuing the case because they advocate for government transparency, equity and accountability.

Radical Hospitality Ministries is part of the lawsuit case because they provide pretrial services and depend on “thorough pretrial data in order to obtain grants and guide its work,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit is seeking a court order to compel the defendants in the case to comply with the pretrial provision of the SAFE-T Act to “compile, analyze, and publish detailed information about the operation and outcomes.”

“Plaintiffs and members of the public are entitled to know how a groundbreaking law has been implemented in this state’s courtrooms and jails. Plaintiffs seek to ensure that this historic law is carried out openly and transparently, under the watchful eye of an informed public,” the lawsuit said.

Cash bail was set to abolish on Jan. 1, 2023 but it was delayed by statewide litigation from prosecutors in Will, Kankakee and numerous other counties.

In a 5-2 ruling on July 18, 2023, the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the abolishment of cash bail, which went into effect several months later.

The bail clause of the Illinois constitution does not include the term “monetary” and did not “cement the practice” of monetary bail, according to the opinion delivered by Mary Jane Theis, former chief justice for the Illinois Supreme Court.

The pretrial provision of the SAFE-T Act “expressly” takes crime victims “into account” by requiring judges to consider the public safety risks of a defendant’s pretrial release and give notice to crime victims before holding a pretrial release hearing, according to Theis.

The high court found bail was not “exclusively a matter for the judiciary” and the state legislature has “long regulated the bail system.”