Editorial: Chicago City Council should not summarily ban Jan. 6 rioters

The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune on Apr 16, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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We understand the temptation for Chicago City Council members to blanket-ban the ragtag rioters and criminals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 believing they had permission from the man who now occupies the White House. It’s hard to imagine any of them, especially those who committed violent acts, rising to the top of a pool of candidates for a city job.

We further understand aldermanic frustration at President Donald Trump’s pardoning of them.

But you cannot logically argue for an independent judiciary nor for a second chance to be offered to violent criminals who say they have changed their ways if you apply any such policy through a strictly political lens, opening the door, say, to Chicago’s reformed armed robbers and violent carjackers but not any of this crew, as pardoned by the president of the United States.

If the City Council has an issue with presidential pardons, it should work to remove that power from the Oval Office, which is not necessarily a bad idea.

But it is still inadvisable to subvert the system. It sets a terrible precedent.

Imagine if a future Republican administration wanted to ban from employment all of the staffers and others who were pardoned, some questionably but all legally, by former President Joe Biden. The result is just tit-for-tat subversion and another blow to America’s supposedly nonpartisan system of justice.

We think Gov. JB Pritzker was wrong to direct the blocking of over 1,500 of those convicted Jan. 6 participants from future state employment, even after they served their time and/or received their pardon. The American judicial system looks at individuals, parses guilt and innocence, separates leaders from followers and is at pains to ensure no one gets blamed for the acts of others.

Chicago should not repeat the state’s mistake and vote instead to look at the Jan. 6 persons on a case-by-case basis, fully considering their individual backgrounds and qualifications, what they did or did not do on that infamous day and whether or not they now have changed their ways. Just like any other applicant for a city job.

If applicants are rejected individually on an evidential basis, perfectly fine. We are all for a high bar for city employment. But the rest is just political grandstanding that plays into the wrong hands.

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