By Simon Carr & Sonya Dymova
Medill Illinois News Bureau
news@capitolnewsillinois.com
A growing number of state lawmakers are moving to repeal a 2015 Illinois law penalizing companies that boycott Israel to protest its policies toward Palestinians.
Amid concerns about Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, lawmakers in Springfield supporting human rights for Palestinians have increasingly signed on to legislation opposing the decade-old anti-boycott law. But so far, these bills have stalled.
Illinois’ 2015 law prohibits state pension funds from investing in companies engaging in the Boycott, Divest, Sanction, or BDS, movement against Israel, making Illinois the first U.S. state to enact such legislation, with dozens of other states following suit. The measure, signed into law by govrenor Bruce Rauner, a Republican, was modeled after similar post-9/11 measures restricting Illinois’ pension funds from investment in companies that engage in business with the governments of Iran and Sudan.
When boycotting Israel became grounds for blacklisting, Illinois lawmakers established the Illinois Investment Policy Board, tasked with investigating companies’ investment choices. Opponents of the laws have warned they curtail free speech. Israel is the only country for which boycotting is penalized in Illinois by the board.
To repeal this policy, Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, D-Bridgeview, introduced House Bill 2723, and Sen. Mike Porfirio, D-Bridgeview, introduced Senate Bill 2462 earlier this year. Since then, some 22 co-sponsors were added in the House and Senate, while two of those later had their names removed.
“This is about the right for people to advocate for what they believe — in this particular case, for human rights advocacy — without the state telling you what you have to believe and how you have to act,” said Rashid, the first Palestinian-American to serve in the Illinois House of Representatives. “It is a matter of making sure that Illinois is on the right side of history — not participating in the oppression of the Palestinian people – but it is also about making sure the Illinoisans and companies that do business in Illinois are not being forced and bullied and retaliated against because they chose to stand for human rights.”
Thirty companies are currently on the Illinois Investment Policy Board’s prohibited entity list for boycotting Israel.
In 2021, Unilever, for example, was added to that list after its subsidiary — ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s — announced it would stop selling its products in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as defined by the United Nations. While remaining a supporter of Israel, the company said it did not support “an internationally recognised illegal occupation.”
Chicago-based investment firm Morningstar narrowly avoided state divestment in 2022, when the Illinois Investment Policy Board accused the firm’s subsidiary, Sustainalytics, of having an anti-Israel bias. The company then commissioned an independent report that found evidence of anti-Israel bias in Morningstar’s standalone product, Human Rights Radar. Morningstar agreed to accept a series of recommendations, including discontinuing the Human Rights Radar and no longer taking input from the United Nations Human Rights Council, in order to avoid state divestment.
Simon Carr and Sonya Dymova are students in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and are fellows in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.