A federal appeals court in Chicago on Thursday upheld Illinois’ 2023 assault weapons ban, overturning a lower court decision and delivering what could be a short-lived victory to Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.
In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Illinois law, which also prohibits high-capacity ammunition magazines, is “consistent with our regulatory tradition” and does not violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
“Whatever else may be contributing to America’s mass-shooting epidemic, the record makes one thing clear: The more people killed, the more likely it is that the killer used an assault weapon and large-capacity magazines,” Appellate Judge Amy St. Eve, who was nominated to the court by President Donald Trump, wrote for the majority.
The majority opinion from St. Eve and Judge Frank Easterbook, a nominee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, sends the case back to U.S. District Court in southern Illinois with instructions to rule in favor of the state of Illinois.
The ruling represents a significant victory for gun control groups and leading Democratic officials, including Pritzker, who pushed for the ban on a long list of high-powered semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines after a mass shooting at Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade in 2022 that killed seven people and injured dozens more.
“Illinois will continue banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines capable of inflicting mass casualties,” Pritzker said in a social media post. “A victory in the fight to end gun violence that helps keep our communities safe.”
Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose office is defending the state law, called the ruling “a win that enhances public safety in Illinois.”
“We have seen the damage that assault weapons and large-capacity magazines can inflict, and these weapons of war have no place in our communities,” Raoul said in a statement.
The longevity of that victory remains in question, however, after the U.S. Supreme Court indicated last week that it would take up legal challenges to similar laws in Cook County and the state of Connecticut.
Firearm industry groups that are involved in the legal challenge to the Illinois law said they were disappointed, though not surprised, by the ruling from the 7th Circuit and expressed confidence that the Supreme Court would ultimately rule in their favor.
“There is absolutely nothing new here,” said Dan Eldridge, president of Federal Firearms Licensees of Illinois, an advocacy group for gun dealers that has been part of the litigation.
Eldridge noted Thursday’s opinion relied on much the same reasoning the appeals court had used in previous cases involving assault weapons bans.
“It’s just regrettable that they chose to sit on it until after the Supreme Court was out of session,” he said.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation said in a statement that it planned to appeal to the high court and anticipated justices would overturn the Cook County and Connecticut bans based on previous rulings that pared back gun restrictions.
The challenge to the Illinois law is based on landmark Second Amendment cases decided by the high court, including the 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In that case, the 6-3 conservative majority ruled that modern gun laws must be rooted in the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Key to that determination is whether gun laws are historically consistent with laws on the books in the 18th century, when the Bill of Rights was ratified.
In its 44-page opinion, the appeals court found it was “appropriate to take a more nuanced approach to the historical inquiry” and that differences between the Illinois law and past rulings cited in the legal challenge were “less material in light of the dramatic technological changes and unprecedented societal concerns that have taken root since the Founding and Reconstruction eras.”
Attorneys in Raoul’s office have argued the prohibited weapons are not considered “arms” under the Second Amendment and that they possess the same qualities as military weapons that are not commonly used for self-defense.
While the appeals court’s ruling assumes the weapons in question are “arms,” it found that “legislatures have long imposed restrictions on particularly dangerous weapons, and the (Illinois law) is but another chapter in that story.”
Illinois Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Hunger argued during the September oral arguments that the prohibited guns, particularly AR-15s, should not be typical for civilian use and that if the courts say it’s constitutional for the government to ban automatic weapons, the same principle applies to semiautomatic weapons.
“Mass shootings are a very specific type of event and this law was enacted to prevent this type of shooting,” Hunger said during the hearing.
In challenging the law, gun rights groups, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation, cited the Bruen case to argue Illinois’ ban on many semiautomatic guns — requiring the trigger to be pulled once per round — is too broad because it doesn’t protect guns that are commonly used by law-abiding citizens, including AR-15- and AK-47-type guns that are subject to the Illinois ban.
The court’s majority rejected the argument that widespread use of the guns necessarily conferred constitutional protection. As historical precedent, the court pointed to 19th-century restrictions on Bowie knives, which were upheld in courts despite the fact that the weapons “were both widespread and used for lawful purposes.”
“As the Reconstruction-era judicial decisions cited earlier demonstrate, our ancestors regulated particularly dangerous weapons for sufficiently specific similar reasons as Illinois is regulating AR-15s and large-capacity magazines,” the majority opinion says.
In his dissenting opinion, 7th Circuit Chief Judge Michael Brennan, another Trump appointee, argued that, despite weighing “perhaps the most comprehensive trial record in any Second Amendment case to date,” the majority was repeating a previous error it made in a preliminary ruling upholding the law. That decision, with the same split, came in a group of cases that also included similar bans in Chicago, Cook County and Naperville.
“Our Nation’s enduring traditions forbid governments from prohibiting firearms commonly owned for self-defense. Because the people have overwhelmingly chosen the AR-15 rifle and its magazine as their weapon of choice, they are protected by the Second Amendment,” Brennan wrote in a dissent that ran seven pages longer than the majority opinion.
While the Trump administration is not a party to the case, Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, argued before the 7th Circuit in September that the nation has a “strong interest” in ensuring that the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms is “not relegated to a second-class right.”
Dhillon’s participation in oral arguments was an indication of just how far the Trump administration is willing to go to fight Illinois’ gun ban. Pritzker, who is running for a third term as governor and has been an outspoken opponent of Trump, has repeatedly defended the law as constitutional, reasonable and necessary.
Aside from the president’s administration inserting itself into the legal fight, Justice Clarence Thomas, who has long been part of the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative wing, indicated in court papers in July 2024 that the Illinois weapons ban is “highly suspect” and the high court should accept the full case if it comes back for review.
Pritzker, who is considered a potential contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, signed into law the ban on so-called assault weapons in January 2023, six months after the mass shooting in Highland Park. The law prohibits more than 100 semiautomatic rifles, handguns and shotguns, high-capacity magazines and other accessories, and requires gun owners who possessed these weapons prior to the ban to register them with the Illinois State Police.
The gun ban has withstood a number of legal challenges.
U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, nominated to the bench by Trump during his first term, granted a motion from gun rights groups in April 2023 to temporarily block the enforcement of the gun ban. His ruling was overturned later in the year by the 7th U.S. Circuit, which found in a 2-1 vote “there is a long tradition, unchanged from the time when the Second Amendment was added to the Constitution, supporting a distinction between weapons and accessories designed for military or law-enforcement use, and weapons designed for personal use.”
But at that time, the appeals court noted its opinion dealt only with a preliminary injunction from the lower court and did not “rule definitively on the constitutionality” of the state and local laws at issue.
Chicago Tribune’s Olivia Olander contributed.