A federal appeals panel has, for now, turned aside an attempt by a Naperville gun shop owner and others to block enforcement of Illinois’ law banning so-called “assault weapons.”
The order from the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals leaves in place a Chicago federal district judge’s ruling that the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms does not extend to the ownership, sale and use of weapons that the state may classify as particularly “dangerous,” even if those weapons are commonly owned and used by millions of people for lawful purposes.
The order offered no explanation from the court for its decision to deny a request for an injunction pending resolution of an appeal from Naperville gun shop owner Robert Bevis and others challenging the Illinois gun ban law, nor did the order indicate which judges had considered the motion.
The order comes as the latest step in what is expected to be a long and protracted court fight over the ultimate fate of the so-called Protect Illinois Communities Act.
That law was enacted by Gov. JB Pritzker and the Democratic supermajority in the Illinois General Assembly in January. The law generally prohibits Illinois residents and store owners from selling or buying a long list of semiautomatic firearms, which the state has designated as “assault weapons.” The law also forbids the ownership and sale of certain kinds of so-called “large capacity” ammunition magazines and other accessories designed to be used with such weapons.
Further, the law would require Illinois residents who currently own such otherwise-prohibited weapons to register them with the Illinois State Police.
Those who don’t comply could face fines or imprisonment.
Passage of the law has sparked a storm of lawsuits across the state from those who believe the law violates the U.S. Constitution and the Illinois state constitution.
The Illinois Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the law in May, after judges in Effingham County and Macon County, and the state’s Fifth District Appellate Court, declared the law unconstitutional. Those proceedings could decide the ultimate fate of cases filed exclusively on the grounds that the law violates the Illinois state constitution.
However, in federal courts, a bevy of other cases now pending in courts in Chicago, Rockford and East St. Louis are all challenging Illinois’ law on the basis that it violates the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms.
Those challenges are couched in the language of the high court’s two most recent decisions demolishing state and local governments’ attempts to restrict their residents’ rights to firearm ownership and use.
Most recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, that states cannot defend gun bans simply by claiming the law promotes public safety or some other “important interest.”
Further, the Supreme Court required governments to defend their attempts to restrict firearms against the backdrop of America’s historical, constitutional and legal traditions concerning regulations under the Second Amendment.
In the federal court legal challenges to the Illinois law, the plaintiffs assert the law falls far short under Bruen. They have all requested injunctions barring enforcement of the law statewide while they seek final judgments striking down the new gun rules as unconstitutional.
To date, however, courts have not yet issued any such clear statewide injunctions.
Rather, in the only federal opinion entered to date, U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall, in Illinois Northern District Court, denied the injunction request sought by Bevis in the Naperville case. In that ruling, she agreed with lawyers for the state that the Illinois gun ban should be allowed under the Second Amendment because she believes the Second Amendment’s protections don’t extend to the ownership and use of particularly “dangerous weapons.”
Kendall agreed the state’s need to act in the name of preventing mass shootings outweigh the constitutional rights of gun owners.
The state has largely echoed Kendall’s ruling in nearly all of the responses it has filed in the myriad cases now pending, saying the “assault weapons” are uniquely dangerous and more lethal than other weaponry, so the Second Amendment is no obstacle to the state’s move to ban and potentially seize such firearms from Illinois citizens.
Bevis appealed Kendall’s ruling to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Noting that the state is still moving to enforce the law against its citizens, Bevis asked the court to issue an injunction blocking the state from enforcing the law while his appeal plays out.
In the weeks since Bevis filed that motion in March, other groups and individuals challenging the gun ban filed arguments supporting Bevis’ request. They similarly asked the Seventh Circuit court to step in and block the law, while they await their anticipated turn before the appeals court, as well, perhaps on the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
While the Seventh Circuit denied the request for injunction, for now, other requests for injunction are also pending in other federal courts.
In Chicago federal district court, U.S. District Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins this week heard arguments on an injunction request against the gun ban from a challenger identified as Chicago physician Javier Herrera.
Herrera had sought to combine his case with other challenges, but has so far been unsuccessful.
Jenkins is the newest judge confirmed to the bench in the U.S. Northern District of Illinois. She was appointed by President Joe Biden, an outspoken supporter of such “assault weapons” bans, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March.
Jenkins has not yet ruled on Herrera’s motion.
Meanwhile, in southern Illinois federal court, U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn is expected to rule soon on a request for injunction from a consolidated group of plaintiffs in four cases challenging the state law under the Second Amendment. That group includes the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association representing America’s gun makers. They are represented by attorneys Erin Murphy and Paul Clement, who successfully argued the Bruen case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
McGlynn was nominated by former President Donald Trump in 2019, and confirmed to the bench by the Senate in 2020.
During the hearing on April 12, McGlynn appeared to particularly press the law’s defenders. The judge particularly noted he was troubled by the potential for the law to punish otherwise law-abiding gun owners. And he repeatedly questioned how the law can hold up under Bruen by banning firearms that are, in some instances, more commonly owned than the most popular models of Ford pickup trucks.
In the meantime, Bevis’ appeal of Judge Kendall’s decision in the Naperville case remains pending before the Seventh Circuit.