SPRINGFIELD, Ill (CN) — The Illinois Supreme Court ruled 4 -3 on Friday morning to uphold the state's ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammo magazines, overturning a lower state court ruling issued this past March.
The decision is a victory for gun control advocates across Illinois, as well as for Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker's administration. Pritzker signed the ban into law this past January, following its approval by both chambers of the Illinois Legislature and in the aftermath of a July 4, 2022, mass shooting in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park that saw seven people killed and dozens more injured.
“The Supreme Court’s ruling upholds the Legislature’s commitment to value the lives of our children over guns," Democratic Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch, one of the ban's sponsors, said in a statement Friday morning. "This ruling makes it clear that the safety of our cities, our suburbs, and our small towns is not subject to the veto of the gun lobby."
A second state-level challenge to the ban is also pending before the Supreme Court, held in abeyance pending Friday's ruling. It remains to be seen how this decision will impact the abeyed case's viability.
The ban, which is set to take full effect in 2024, prohibits with some exceptions the sale, purchase and possession of a wide range of guns deemed assault weapons by the Illinois Legislature. It similarly bans ammo magazines with capacities larger than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns. Current Illinois assault weapon owners will be able to keep their guns if they register them with the state police, but those found in possession of unregistered guns past New Year's Day 2024 could face felony charges.
As was the case in the Legislature earlier this year, support for the ban largely split the high court along party lines. Democratic Justices Elizabeth Rochford, P. Scott Neville and Joy Cunningham, alongside Chief Justice Mary Jane Theis, voted to uphold the ban, with Republican Justices Lisa Holder White and David Overstreet dissenting. Democratic Justice Mary Kay O'Brien also dissented, though wrote a separate opinion from the one penned by the GOP justices.
Justice Rochford, who wrote the 20-page majority opinion, did not directly address whether the ban violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. She noted — as the state's lawyers did during oral arguments on the case in May — that those who initially filed suit against the ban this past January in central Illinois' Macon County did not press that issue either in their original filing.
Rather the plaintiffs in the suit — consisting of Republican Illinois representative Dan Caulkins, a pawn broker dealing in firearms, and a gun rights advocacy group — leaned on the Second Amendment to argue that exemptions to the ban for law enforcement, military personnel and private security violate equal protection laws, as they impact a fundamental right under the state and federal constitutions.
"The complaint did not allege the restrictions violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and none of the six counts were labeled that way," Rochford wrote, opining in a separate paragraph that "invoking the right to keep and bear arms in the context of scrutinizing the act’s classifications is not the same as alleging the restrictions violate the Second Amendment. Plaintiffs directed [their claims] at the exemptions, not the restrictions themselves."
The majority's sidestep of the Second Amendment did not escape some Republican critics. GOP state Senator Terri Bryant, who voted against the ban in January, condemned the majority ruling in a statement on Friday. She further said that she expected the ban to be overturned via its federal court challenges currently pending in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.
“While the Illinois Supreme Court’s ruling is disappointing, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. The governor’s hand-picked court provided him cover by not ruling on whether this law violates the 2nd Amendment," Bryant wrote. "But even the governor knows that this law won’t stand on the grounds of our constitutional right to bear arms when it makes its way through the federal court system."
The dissenting Republican justices, however, also largely avoided broaching the issue of whether the ban violates the Second Amendment. Instead their opinions rely on supposed procedural violations the Legislature made in passing the laws, specifically the claim state lawmakers violated the "three readings" requirement of the state constitution. Under this requirement, a proposed “bill shall be read by title on three different days in each house.”
Justices Holder White and Overstreet argued that the Protect Illinois Communities Act outlining the assault weapon ban only came before the Legislature on a single day in January. The pointed out the Act was born out of a complete gutting of Illinois House Bill 5471, initially introduced in January 2022 as an amendment to the Illinois insurance code. Though the Legislature had seen HB 5471 many times over the course of 2022, it was amended into the Protect Illinois Communities Act only a day before both chambers voted on it.
"The new bill setting forth the Protect Illinois Communities Act then only spent one day in the House before it was passed and
signed into law," Holder White wrote.
But Rochford noted that even Macon County Judge Rodney Forbes — whose ruling in March that the ban was unconstitutional prompted the Attorney General Office's appeal to the high court — had sided with the state regarding the plaintiffs' three readings claim. She wrote that the plaintiffs failed to cross-appeal this claim, making the issue moot.
"Plaintiffs’ failure to cross-appeal from the part of the judgment denying relief on their three-readings claim is a jurisdictional bar to them arguing the Act is unconstitutional on that basis," Rochford wrote.
The high court's ruling marks the second time this summer that it has delivered a win to the Pritzker administration and to progressive elements throughout the state. In July the justices upheld a controversial abolition of cash bail in a 5 - 2 ruling along party lines, making Illinois the first state in the union to do so.
Beyond the courtroom, Representative Caulkins gave an address Friday condemning the ruling, claiming the Pritzker administration was using Illinois as "a petri dish" for progressive legislation, allegedly as part of the governor's presidential aspirations. He also denied, as many state Democrats have argued, that the assault weapon ban would make Illinois a safer state.
"It disarms honest [Illinois Firearm Owner ID Card-holding] citizens," Caulkins said. "It takes away common guns that they use for self protection, or to protect their families, their property. It makes Illinois less safe."
Dozens of county sheriffs across Illinois have previously stated that they also oppose the the assault weapon ban, stating that it is unconstitutional and that they will not enforce it.
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