Supreme Court won't review Illinois assault weapons ban, leaves it in place

Washington — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal of an Illinois law banning certain semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, leaving the measure intact.

The court declined to review a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit that upheld Illinois' assault weapons ban as a preliminary matter. The challenge to the ban has already been brought before the justices twice, albeit on an emergency basis, and they have decreases has block the law while the legal proceedings were taking place.

His rejection follows the judges' decision not to be considered The constitutionality of a similar Maryland law was challenged before a federal appeals court ruled. Ten states, including Illinois and the District of Columbia, have laws that prohibit the possession of certain assault weapons.

Justice Samuel Alito said he would have granted the request to review the constitutionality of the ban. In a separate statement, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that the case was still in its early stages and hoped the Supreme Court would consider the issues raised by the challengers after the 7th Circuit issues its final decision in the case.

“It is difficult to understand how the Seventh Circuit could have concluded that the most common semi-automatic rifles are not ‘weapons’ protected by the Second Amendment,” Thomas wrote.

The Illinois Ban

Illinois passed its 2023 law banning semi-automatic “assault weapons” and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices after a shooter killed seven people and injured 48 people at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park in 2022. Armed with an AR-15-style rifle and 30-round magazines, the alleged shooter fired 83 rounds in less than a minute, according to court documents.

The law bans certain weapons, including the AR-15 and AK-47, and defines high-capacity magazines as those that hold more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns. Unserviceable or antique firearms, air rifles and handguns are among the weapons still legally permitted in the state.

Shortly after the law was signed in January 2023, six groups of Illinois residents, gun dealers and gun rights groups challenged restrictions on certain semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, calling them a violation of the Second Amendment. In four of those cases, a federal district court in southern Illinois agreed to block the ban, but in the other two, the district courts declined to do so.

A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit reviewed the decisions and, in a divided decision, upheld the gun ban. Applying the Supreme Court’s framework announced in 2022, the appeals court said, among other things, that there is a “long tradition of regulating particularly dangerous weapons of the day, whether firearms, explosives, Bowie knives, or other similar devices” to protect public safety.

Within that tradition, the 7th Circuit majority held, there is a long tradition of allowing the military and law enforcement access to “particularly dangerous weapons” while prohibiting civilians from possessing them.

The panel wrote that it was “not convinced that the AR-15 is materially different from the M16” and noted that the Supreme Court has said such firearms can be regulated or banned.

The firearms banned by the Illinois law “more closely resemble machine guns and military weapons than the many different types of firearms used for individual self-defense,” the 7th Circuit said, concluding that such semi-automatic rifles do not qualify as weapons protected by the Second Amendment.

The protesters appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that under Illinois' ban, law-abiding residents cannot own guns owned by millions of Americans.

“The Seventh Circuit’s decision demonstrates a persistent refusal to follow this court’s Second Amendment precedents and manifests a continuing distaste for, if not hostility toward, the right of citizens to keep and bear arms,” lawyers for a group of plaintiffs, led by the group Gun Owners for America, wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court.

Another group of protesters, led by the National Association for Gun Rights, argued that laws banning guns commonly used for legal purposes are “categorically unconstitutional.”

“If the courts continue to operate under the mistaken impression that the right to keep and bear arms protects only sterilized firearms like break-action shotguns and bolt-action shotguns, the Second Amendment will offer nothing more than a parchment barrier against tyranny,” Gun Owners of America said in its brief.

But state lawyers have urged the Supreme Court to dismiss the lawsuit, which would keep the ban in place, because it is too early for it to intervene.

“The courts are working diligently and carefully to apply the text-tradition standard announced two years ago in Bruen to laws prohibiting civilian possession of assault weapons and [large-capacity magazines] — many of which have been in effect for decades. And, as the decision below shows, they do so in a manner consistent with Supreme Court precedent, they said in a filing.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the state solicitor general also noted that the 7th Circuit applied the Supreme Court's history and tradition test and determined that features of certain semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines were “unsuitable and unnecessary for civilian self-defense.”

The trial court's decision, they said, “concluded that the tradition of restricting the use of certain weapons to civilian purposes included a tradition of reserving some of them, if necessary, for military or law enforcement use. That tradition is supported by numerous federal, state and local laws.”

In a statement Tuesday, Raoul said his office “will continue to vigorously defend its constitutionality as the litigation returns to the lower courts.”

“In Illinois, we are addressing gun violence comprehensively, and I will continue to use every tool available to protect our children and our communities from the trauma of gun violence,” he said.