The Supreme Court sidestepped a new set of Second Amendment fights on Tuesday, declining to hear a challenge to an assault weapons ban in Illinois and sending other gun cases back to lower courts, including a challenge to the law used to convict Hunter Biden. The moves came after the justices upheld a gun law intended to protect victims of domestic violence, marking the first gun rights case following a landmark ruling two years ago that expanded gun rights. The court still has another firearm case on its docket for the fall, weighing a Biden administration appeal over the regulation of difficult-to-trace ghost guns.
The justices left for another day questions about other state and federal gun restrictions that have arisen in the wake of the 2022 ruling known as Bruen, which said that gun laws must be grounded in historic tradition to stay on the books. Justice Samuel Alito disagreed with the high court’s decision not to hear a challenge to the Illinois assault weapons ban in the fall, and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a statement that he hopes to take up the case after lower courts reach a final judgment.
The law passed after a mass shooting at a 2022 Independence Day parade in the Chicago suburbs left seven people dead. Ten states and the District of Columbia now have bans on semiautomatic guns often referred to as assault weapons, according to the gun control group Brady, which tracks the legislation.
Another gun case challenging the law used to convict Hunter Biden was sent back to lower courts for another look after the high court’s June decision in the domestic-violence-related gun case. The justices told the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to take another look at their ruling that struck down a longstanding ban on drug users having guns. Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys have cited the ruling as they fight the case filed against him for buying a gun during a period where he was addicted to drugs.
The Supreme Court also sent back to lower courts several cases challenging a law against people having guns after they are convicted of crimes. That includes the case of Bryan Range, a Pennsylvania man convicted of misstating his income to get food stamps for his family in 1995. An appeals court decided a lifetime gun ban violated his Second Amendment rights.
The justices also sent back a case challenging a gun law in New York, the same state that gave rise to the high court’s Bruen ruling. New York passed a new measure after the justices struck down its strict concealed carry law. It opened the door to more people getting licenses while putting restrictions on where guns could be carried, including playgrounds, schools, theaters, places that serve alcohol, and buses. An appeals court blocked parts of that measure but allowed the state to continue banning firearms in certain “sensitive” locations and denying gun licenses to dangerous people.
In a related development, the Illinois Supreme Court on Friday upheld the state’s assault-style weapons ban in a 4-3 ruling after months of legal challenges sought to dismantle the law. State lawmakers in January passed, and Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law, a measure to ban assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines. Those who already own such rifles face limitations on their sale and transfer and must register them with the Illinois State Police by 2024.
That law, which came about six months after the July 2022 Highland Park, Illinois, shooting, faced immediate lawsuits in state and federal court that argued it violated the Illinois and US constitutions. A Macon County Circuit Court judge found earlier this year that exemptions to the law, including for law enforcement officers and armed guards at federally supervised nuclear sites, violated the equal protection clause of the state’s constitution.
The Illinois Supreme Court agreed to fast-track the state’s appeal, and in a 20-page opinion, reversed the circuit court’s judgment. The majority’s opinion claimed to focus on two core issues brought by the plaintiffs: whether the law violated the plaintiffs’ right to equal protection and if it constituted special legislation that created laws for some firearms owners and not others. The majority opinion notably did not decide if the ban violated the Second Amendment, asserting that the plaintiffs had waived this issue.
“We express no opinion on the potential viability of plaintiffs’ waived claim concerning the Second Amendment,” they wrote. However, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Jerry Stocks, told CNN the majority justices misrepresented their arguments. Stocks said the Second Amendment is a fundamental right inextricably linked to their arguments and thus should have weighed heavily on scrutiny of the ban. Ignoring the issue altogether was improper, he said.
“We have a circus in Illinois and the clowns are in charge right now,” Stocks said. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said the new law is a “critical part” of the state’s efforts to combat gun violence, and Pritzker’s office hailed the decision to uphold “a commonsense gun reform law to keep mass-killing machines off of our streets and out of our schools, malls, parks, and places of worship.”
Nancy Rotering, the Democratic mayor of Highland Park, called on Congress to act on tougher federal restrictions and said Friday’s decision “sends a message to residents that saving lives takes precedence over thoughts and prayers and acknowledges the importance of sensible gun control measures.”
Illinois has struggled to restrict the flow of illegal guns, particularly in Chicago, while officials in the state have faced legal hurdles to implementing new gun restrictions. Despite gun rights advocates challenging the assault-style weapons ban and asking the US Supreme Court to block the ban – along with a city ordinance passed last year by Naperville, Illinois, that bans the sale of assault rifles – the US Supreme Court in May refused to intervene.
Source: Nexstar Media, Inc., CNN
