U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear challenge to Illinois assault weapons ban

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a series of appeals against Illinois' assault weapons ban, though Justice Clarence Thomas insisted the court should consider the issue later, once lower courts finish reviewing the controversial law.

The Supreme Court's decision comes days before the second anniversary of the July 4 shooting in Highland Park that inspired the measure.

The groups challenging the ban filed their appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court after a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled last fall that guns covered by Illinois' assault weapons ban do not enjoy Second Amendment protection.

In November, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that assault weapons and high-capacity magazines “more closely resemble machine guns and military-grade weapons than the many types of firearms used for individual self-defense.”

The court said it was not intended to “definitively rule on the constitutionality of the law” and that its opinion arose from lower courts' decisions on preliminary injunctions against the law. The appeals court oversees Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Thomas wrote Tuesday that the 7th Circuit's decision “illustrates why this court must provide more clarity on which weapons are covered by the Second Amendment.”

“If the Seventh Circuit Court ultimately allows Illinois to ban the most widely used civilian rifle in the United States, we can – and should – revisit that decision once the cases are finally decided,” Thomas wrote. “The Court should not allow the Seventh Circuit Court to ban the most widely used civilian rifle in the United States, but we should revisit that decision once the cases are finally decided,” Thomas wrote. [to] relegate[e] “The Second Amendment is a second-class right.”

Tuesday's order said Justice Samuel Alito would hear the challenge.

Opponents of the Illinois law say the 7th Circuit's decision runs counter to the Supreme Court's 2022 opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which said gun regulation must be “consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation.”

The Supreme Court, however, clarified its position on these issues in a ruling last month. In a case known as United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that some lower courts had “misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases.”

“These precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber,” he wrote.

Illinois law prohibits the sale of assault weapons and limits the purchase of magazines to 10 rounds for long guns and 15 for handguns. The law was enacted in January 2023 in response to the shooting at the 2022 Fourth of July parade in Highland Park that left seven people dead.

Lawyers challenging the ban argued that “there would be no point” in seeking a final, more comprehensive ruling from the lower courts. They argued that it is actually “extremely rare” for the guns in question to be used for illegal purposes and that “ordinary handguns are the weapon of choice for criminals.”

In the meantime, they insisted that these weapons are held by “tens of millions of Americans across the country for lawful purposes, including self-defense, hunting and target practice. It follows that banning them is “out of the question.” … It's that simple.

Illinois lawyers stressed the preliminary nature of the appeals court's decision and noted that the 7th Circuit was the first appeals court to hear such a case since the 2022 Bruen decision.

Illinois lawyers argued that the Thompson submachine gun was not banned by the states and federal government until the late 1920s and early 1930s, following press reports of its “criminal misuse.” They later pointed to a similar trend with assault weapons.

“After the federal ban on assault weapons expired in 2004, sales of these weapons increased…and mass shootings involving these weapons became common.”

Illinois' assault weapons ban and other similar laws followed, they said.