Cook County should fire off millions of dollars in refunds to gun and ammunition buyers, after the Illinois Supreme Court declared the county had unconstitutionally implemented taxes on the sale of firearms and ammo.
Further, they are asking the courts to again step in and strike down the county’s attempts to continue collecting those taxes from gun and ammo buyers, declaring the taxes to be unconstitutional violations of the Second Amendment.
On June 9, attorney Thomas A. Zimmerman and others with the Zimmerman Law Offices, of Chicago, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiffs Donald T. Vandermyde and Ana Zavala, identified as Illinois residents who purchased firearms and ammunition in Cook County.
Thomas A. Zimmerman, Jr
| attorneyzim.com
The lawsuit particularly takes aim at the county’s decision to keep millions of dollars in tax revenue it collected for nine years, from 2012-2021, on the sale of firearms and ammunition, despite a ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court that those gun taxes had been levied and collected unconstitutionally.
The state high court delivered its ruling in October 2021, striking down Cook County’s gun and ammo taxes.
The ruling came nearly nine years after Cook County imposed the first of those taxes, a $25 fee on the purchase of firearms in the county.
Three years later, the county followed with a measure slapping taxes on ammunition of either a penny or 5 cents per cartridge, depending on the type of ammunition.
All of those taxes were challenged in 2015 by a collection of plaintiffs, including nonprofit firearms owners’ advocacy group, Guns Save Life, a Des Plaines gun shop and firing range and an individual gun owner.
When the case landed before the state Supreme Court six years later, the justices recognized the tax on gun and ammo sales represented a direct burden on the ability of Cook County residents to exercise their rights to “acquire a firearm and the necessary ammunition for self-defense.”
Rather, the high court relied on the so-called “uniformity clause” in the Illinois state constitution, which governs the manner in which the Illinois state government and its so-called local subdivisions, like counties, can impose taxes on Illinois residents. Under one of the interpretations of that clause, such state and local governments must make a tax line up with its stated purpose.
In its decision, the state Supreme Court said the Cook County tax ran afoul of the Uniformity Clause because it didn’t use the money in a way that would fund “violence prevention programs” or fund “criminal justice agencies charged with combatting gun violence,” as the county had claimed.
In a special concurrence to that decision, Illinois Supreme Court Justice Michael Burke warned the his colleagues’ desire to avoid striking down the taxes outright left the door open for the county to simply rewrite the tax ordinances and continue collecting the taxes, setting up another showdown in court over unconstitutional taxes.
In the new case, the plaintiffs allege the county has done just that.
In the new complaint, the gun owner plaintiffs assert the county has rewritten the ordinance to specifically direct tax money to programs and agencies the county claims will combat gun violence and deal with its effects.
However, the tax ordinances remain unconstitutional, the plaintiffs said, violating their right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, and their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Since the New Ordinances simply change the fund in which the proceeds from the Taxes are held by the County, and do not change the applicability or amount of the Taxes, the Second Amendment burdens imposed by the New Ordinances are the same as, or substantially similar to, the Second Amendment burdens imposed by the Old Ordinances,” the plaintiffs wrote in their complaint.
Further, the plaintiffs alleged Cook County cannot show the alleged purposes of the taxes exceed the “burdens imposed” on gun owners and ammo buyers.
They are asking a Cook County judge to strike down the ordinances as unconstitutional.
Further, the plaintiffs are asking the court to order the county to pay out millions of dollars in refunds to people, like Vandermyde and Zavala, who purchased firearms and ammo in Cook County under tax ordinances that were found to be unconstitutional.
The lawsuit asks the court to expand the action to include potentially thousands of people who also purchased guns and ammo in Cook County, and paid the county taxes, since 2012.
The complaint does not estimate how much money Cook County has collected from the unconstitutionally levied taxes in that time. But in 2020, the last full year in which taxes were collected before the Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional, the lawsuit estimated Cook County collected “more than $1.9 million.”
The plaintiffs are represented by Zimmerman, as well as attorneys Sharon A. Harris, Matthew C. De Re and Jeffrey D. Blake, all of the Zimmerman firm.