Illinois ban on high-powered firearms blocked by federal judge downstate; Gov. Pritzker’s office ‘confident’ law will be upheld
A federal judge in southern Illinois on Friday issued an injunction blocking enforcement of the state’s new ban on many higher-powered firearms and large-capacity ammunition magazines, just days after a counterpart in Chicago ruled the opposite way.
The Friday ruling came in a case that consolidated lawsuits brought by a variety of groups, including the Illinois State Rifle Association, against the law passed in the Democratic-controlled General Assembly and signed by Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in January in response to the deadly mass shooting at last year’s Fourth of July parade in north suburban Highland Park.
Writing that “a constitutional right is at stake,” U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn found the plaintiffs in the case showed the law caused an “irreparable harm” by denying them the ability to “purchase their firearm of choice” and “exercise their right to self-defense in the manner they choose.”
McGlynn, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2020, also noted that “the Illinois (Sheriffs’) Association and some Illinois (State’s) Attorneys believe (the law) unconstitutional and cannot, in good conscience, enforce the law as written and honor their sworn oath to uphold the Constitution.”
David Sigale, an attorney for the Illinois State Rifle Association, welcomed the ruling and said that based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from last year, McGlynn’s decision was the “only conclusion to draw.”
Sigale said he hopes the focus in the gun debate should be about keeping dangerous people from having access to firearms, including the alleged Highland Park shooter, Robert “Bobby” Crimo III.
“Everyone apparently that knew this guy knew that he shouldn’t have had access to a butter knife, much less a firearm,” Sigale said. “We have to do better in making sure that the people who are threats, that we take steps to limit their access that doesn’t involve taking away the rights of everybody.”
Despite the ruling, “the (governor’s) administration is confident that as the case continues, this critical public safety law will ultimately be upheld as constitutional,” Pritzker spokeswoman Olivia Kuncio said in a statement.
Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul plans to appeal McGlynn’s ruling, spokeswoman Jamey Dunn-Thomason said in a statement.
The ruling comes three days after U.S. District Judge Lindsay Jenkins declined to issue an injunction in a similar case in the Chicago-based Northern District.
In that case, Jenkins, appointed last year by President Joe Biden, found that Chicago emergency room physician Javier Herrera failed to show the law created any harm that would “outweigh the overwhelming interest in public safety” and justify an injunction.
Herrera has appealed to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Another federal judge in Chicago made a similar ruling in a previous lawsuit a Naperville gun shop owner brought that challenges both a local ban and the state law. The 7th Circuit upheld that ruling, and the gun shop owner intends to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Given the conflicting court decisions, the real-world implications of Friday’s ruling were not immediately clear.
The Illinois Supreme Court, meanwhile, is set to hear oral arguments on May 16 in a lawsuit challenging the law at the state level.
State Rep. Bob Morgan, a Deerfield Democrat who was marching in the Highland Park parade when the shooting occurred and sponsored the measure in the Illinois House, noted Friday’s ruling does not apply to the law’s ban on rapid-fire devices known as “switches,” or to another provision extending the length of firearm restraining orders that can be used to take guns away from people who are a danger to themselves or others.
Like Pritzker, Morgan was optimistic that the law will be upheld on appeal.
“Since its enactment, this law has already prevented the sales of thousands of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in Illinois, making Illinois communities safer for families,” Morgan said in a statement. “This is necessary and life-saving legislation.”
In addition to the Illinois State Rifle Association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation also is a plaintiff in the federal case before McGlynn in the Southern District.
The lawsuits lean heavily on the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, in which the Supreme Court found that the “plain text” of the Second Amendment protected the rights of the plaintiffs to carry guns for self-defense. The ruling last year also established a new constitutional standard holding that gun laws today shall be historically consistent with laws on the books in the 18th century, when the Second Amendment was codified.
In McGlynn’s courtroom earlier this month, Erin Murphy, a lawyer for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, argued the state’s ban on many semi-automatic guns — in which each round requires a trigger pull — is too broad because it prohibits guns that are commonly used by law-abiding citizens. Murphy cited Bruen when arguing “the historical tradition test is what is in common use today.”
Meanwhile, Christopher Wells, a lawyer representing the Illinois attorney general’s office, which is defending the ban, argued before McGlynn that the case law cited by Murphy and lawyers for the other plaintiffs did not meet the burden to strike down the weapons ban. Wells sought to compare military-use rifles, like M-16s, with AR-15s, which are subject to Illinois’ gun ban and have been blamed on many mass shootings in the U.S., and argued there isn’t much “functional difference” between the two weapons.
In weighing the entirety of the arguments from both sides, in his 29-page ruling, McGlynn asked: “Can the senseless crimes of a relative few be so despicable to justify the infringement of the constitutional rights of law-abiding individuals in hopes that such crimes will then abate or, at least, not be as horrific? More specifically, can (the state law) be harmonized with the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution and with Bruen?”
He concluded, “The simple answer at this stage in the proceedings is ‘likely no.’”
Citing case law, McGlynn also found unpersuasive arguments made by the attorney general’s office that various accessories subject to the ban, such as detachable magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds of ammunition, are “non-essential” and should not be considered as “arms” protected by the Second Amendment.
“It is hard to imagine something more closely correlated to the right to use a firearm in self-defense than the ability to effectively load ammunition into the firearm,” McGlynn’s opinion said.
McGlynn also didn’t find persuasive the attorney general’s argument that the weapons ban was consistent with Bruen’s historical tradition clause in that “neither large capacity magazine nor assault weapons were in common use” when the Second Amendment was ratified.
“This argument is ‘bordering on the frivolous’ because ‘the Second Amendment (extends) … to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding,’” according to McGlynn’s opinion, citing a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled the Second Amendment establishes the right to own a handgun for personal self-defense, not only as part of a state militia.