## Facts

- The North Cook Intermediate Service Center (Center) was established by the Illinois State Board of Education and operated as a branch of state government.
- The Center entered into a lease for property located in the Village of Skokie, Illinois.
- The Center planned to build and operate an alternative school serving at-risk students with repeated disciplinary problems.
- Skokie had zoning laws regulating land use within the Village.
- Skokie informed the Center that the proposed school required (1) an amendment to the Village’s zoning laws and (2) a special-use permit.
- The Center submitted applications for the zoning amendment and the special-use permit.
- The Skokie Plan Commission approved the requested zoning amendment and special-use application.
- Skokie’s governing authorities overruled the Plan Commission’s approvals and denied both the amendment and the permit, preventing the Center from proceeding with the project at the leased site.
- The Center filed suit in the Illinois Circuit Court, Chancery Division, alleging that the Illinois Constitution and the Illinois School Code barred the Village from using local zoning to stop the school.
- The Center moved for summary judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether, under the Illinois Constitution and the Illinois School Code, Skokie could enforce its zoning requirements to require a zoning amendment and special-use permit for the Center’s proposed alternative school.
2. Whether Skokie’s denial of the zoning amendment and special-use permit could lawfully block the Center—described as a state-established entity—from building and operating the alternative school on leased property.

## Decision

- The Center sought declaratory and injunctive relief and moved for summary judgment.
- Publicly available case summaries confirm the pleadings and motion practice but do not report the circuit court’s disposition on the summary-judgment motion or the final outcome of the case.

## Legal Principles

- The Center’s claim relied on the view that state constitutional and statutory authority over public education can limit municipal land-use regulation when local requirements conflict with state-authorized educational operations.
- The dispute presented a state-authority versus local-zoning conflict: Skokie applied zoning and special-use processes to control a proposed school site, while the Center asserted state law prevented that local control.
- In this procedural posture, summary judgment would turn on whether the controlling legal limits on municipal zoning (as applied to the Center and the proposed school) could be resolved as a matter of law on undisputed facts.

## Conclusion

North Cook Intermediate Service Center v. Village of Skokie involved a state-established educational entity’s challenge to Skokie’s zoning and special-use denials that stopped an alternative school for at-risk students from being built on leased property; the available summaries establish the facts, the Center’s state-law theory, and that the Center moved for summary judgment, but they do not disclose the circuit court’s final ruling.


North Cook Intermediate Service Center v. Village of Skokie, No. 99 CH 12107 (2000)