Kim Foxx

Kimberly M. Foxx ( Anderson; born April 4, 1972) is an American politician, who is currently the State's Attorney (district attorney) for Cook County, Illinois.

She manages the second largest prosecutor's office in the United States, consisting of approximately 700 attorneys and 1,100 employees.

Raised by her mother and grandmother, Foxx graduated from LaSalle Language Academy in Old Town and from Lincoln Park High School in 1990.

She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Southern Illinois University, and a J.D. degree from Southern Illinois University School of Law.

She is a member of the board of trustees of Adler University.

After graduating from law school, Foxx worked as an assistant public guardian in the Cook County Public Guardian's Office for three years.

She then worked as Assistant State's Attorney in Cook County for 12 years, joining during Richard A. Devine's tenure as State's Attorney.

In this role, she worked on cases of child protection and juvenile offenders.

In 2013, she was hired as deputy chief of staff for Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, focusing on criminal justice issues.

In September 2015, Foxx announced that she would challenge incumbent Anita Alvarez in the 2016 election for Cook County State's Attorney.

She also faced a second challenger, former federal and state prosecutor Donna More.

Foxx campaigned on a platform of criminal justice reform, emphasizing policies such as diverting low-level offenders to treatment programs rather than prisons, address wrongful convictions, and dealing more aggressively with police misconduct.

During the campaign, Alvarez came under scrutiny for her handling of the murder of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officers.

Foxx criticized Alvarez for her performance on the issues of police accountability and wrongful convictions.

In 2016, she won the Democratic nomination for State's Attorney against incumbent Anita Alvarez and went on to win the general election.

She was later promoted to chief of staff for Preckwinkle, and served in that role until 2016.

Foxx has been described as a protege of Preckwinkle.

On January 14, 2016, the Cook County Democratic Party endorsed Foxx for state's attorney, reversing its decision made in August 2015 to not endorse any candidate.

She won the Democratic primary for state's attorney's race on March 15, 2016, with 58% of the vote, and went on to win the November general election with 72% of the vote.

Relative to the 2016 election, she maintained a high level of support in the county's majority-African American neighborhoods and lost some support in white neighborhoods (especially in Chicago's northwest side and in suburban Cook County).

A series of reports by The People's Lobby and Reclaim Chicago, progressive organizations who had endorsed Foxx in 2016, found that the number of sentences involving prison time in Cook County dropped 2.5% from 2016 to 2017 and 19% from 2017 to 2018.

In March 2017, shortly after taking office, Foxx announced that the State's Attorney's office would no longer pursue keeping certain detainees in jail because they are unable to post the bail amount of $1000.

Foxx expressed support for the proposed Bail Reform Act, testifying in favor of it at the Illinois General Assembly despite opposition to the bill from the Illinois State's Attorneys' Association.

The legislation passed in June 2017 and removed the requirement to post cash bail for those charged with minor crimes.

That same month, Foxx's office announced that prosecutors would no longer request pretrial detention for those charged with low-level nonviolent offenses in court.

In March 2018, Foxx's office launched an open data portal and released 6 years of data on felony criminal cases.

Since then, case-level data on felony intake, initiation, disposition, and sentencing, along with summary reports and dashboards, have been posted on the State's Attorney office's website.

Foxx announced on November 19, 2019, that she would run for re-election.

She faced three competitors in the Democratic Party primary: Bill Conway, Bob Fioretti, and Donna More.

Ahead of the primary, Foxx had been endorsed by several progressive organizations, labor unions, and state-wide elected officials.

Her campaign's largest donors were Michael Sacks, Fred Eychaner, SEIU, Chicago Federation of Labor, and EMILY's List; a Super-PAC supporting her campaign also received a $2 million donation from George Soros.

An October 2019 report by The Marshall Project found that since taking office, Foxx "turned away more than 5,000 cases that would have been pursued by previous State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, mostly by declining to prosecute low-level shoplifting and drug offenses and by diverting more cases to alternative treatment programs."

Foxx has directed her office to not prosecute shoplifting cases under $1,000 as felonies.

She was re-elected in 2020.

In 2023, she announced that she would not run for re-election in 2024.

Foxx ran for the State's Attorney's office on a platform of criminal justice reform, and has often been termed a "reformist", "reform-minded", or "progressive" prosecutor alongside others such as Larry Krasner, Rachael Rollins, Chesa Boudin, Aramis Ayala, Kimberly Gardner, Diana Becton, and Satana Deberry.

She is the second African American, after Cecil A. Partee, to hold this position.

Foxx was born in Chicago and grew up in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project on the Near North Side.

She won the primary election on March 17, 2020, with 50.19% of the vote.

In the November 3, 2020 general election, she defeated Republican candidate Pat O'Brien with 54.1% of the vote and was re-elected to a four-year term.