In 2012, Illinois saw a rash of cases involving the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which forbade making audio or visual recordings of people without explicit consent from everyone in the recording. In practice, the law made recording on-duty police officers a felony in the state. The prosecutions of citizens that ensued prompted the ACLU to challenge the state's Eavesdropping Act, and it was eventually ruled unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds in the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In November 2012, the US Supreme Court denied a request from a Chicago-based prosecutor to review the Seventh Circuit’s decision, letting it stand.

That victory for defendants who were charged with violating the Act has helped the ACLU in similar cases. In 2010, the group brought a case against Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, who had been prosecuting ACLU staff members for recording on-duty police officers. The Northern Illinois District Court judge overseeing the case ruled that in light of the higher courts' decisions, Alvarez may not charge anyone else with violating the Eavesdropping Act. And now this month, the judge ruled that Cook County taxpayers must foot the $645,549 legal bill the ACLU racked up prosecuting the county's state prosecutor. The payment of that penalty will be finalized at a Cook County board meeting on Wednesday of next week, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

“The Illinois Eavesdropping Act... violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as applied to the open audio recording of the audible communications of law enforcement officers (or others whose communications are incidentally captured) when the officers are engaged in their official duties in public places,” a January ruling [PDF] by Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman read. “Defendant Anita Alvarez, in her official capacity as Cook County State’s Attorney, is permanently enjoined from enforcing the Illinois Eavesdropping Act against the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and its employees or agents who openly audio record the audible communications of law enforcement officers (or others whose communications are incidentally captured) when the officers are engaged in their official duties in public places.”

In March of 2012, an Illinois judge ruled that the Eavesdropping Law was unconstitutional in a case involving 60-year old artist Christopher Drew, who was charged with a Class 1 felony for recording audio of his interaction with police. (Drew died of lung cancer in May.) In a similar case, Indiana woman Tiawanda Moore was acquitted in 2011 of eavesdropping when she made a recording of police officers who were trying to get her to drop a sexual harassment complaint.