East Central Reporter

State Rep. Blaine Wilhour ( R-Beecher City) has filed suit against House Speaker Emanuel Welch (D-Westchester) over Wilhour's removal from the chamber for failing to wear a mask.

"I'm a sitting state representative and you want to kick me out of this  body, but you won't confront me personally and you won't have a dialogue with me about this?" Wilhour said in a video posted on his website. "That's pretty weak. It's a total lack of common sense. It's a total lack of critical thought, and the people of the people of Illinois are done with it. They're they're tired of it."

Attorney Thomas G. DeVore filed the lawsuit on behalf of Wilhour and himself. DeVore lives in Wilhour's district and filed his lawsuit in the Bond County Courts.

While she wouldn't comment on the lawsuit itself, Jaclyn Drisoll, Welch's spokesperson, told the State Journal-Register that, "It's disappointing that instead of doing any of the work they were   elected to do, the Republicans would rather use the House chamber as a stage for political theater on the taxpayer's dime."

"It's time that we set an example, that sanity is going to make a return here in the state of Illinois, in Springfield," Wilhour said. "We lived under two years of tyrannical rule for one person, and now we want to kick people out of here because this body that we're in right now has not been tough  enough to do their job for the last two years. We haven't been tough  enough to stand up to a  governor, we haven't been tough enough to stand up to a bureaucracy that is completely out of control."