The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Illinois’s ban on certain semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines Tuesday, avoiding what would’ve been a blockbuster Second Amendment case.
In a brief order, the justices turned away a series of challenges to Illinois’s law and local ordinances. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito publicly dissented, voting to take up the case.
The decision leaves the bans in place, for now, though the challenges will continue in lower courts. Taking up the appeals could’ve stood to impact laws passed in more than a dozen states banning assault-style weapons like the AR-15 rifle or certain magazines.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a statement indicating the court is “rightly wary” of taking up the challenges now because they remain in a preliminary posture, but Thomas said the issue is worth taking up down the road.
“But, if the Seventh Circuit ultimately allows Illinois to ban America’s most common civilian rifle, we can—and should—review that decision once the cases reach a final judgment,” Thomas wrote.
Bans on assault-style rifles have become a flashpoint of the constitutional debate surrounding gun control following the Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment decision two years ago that changed the test for weighing the constitutionality of gun laws.
That ruling has led lower courts to strike down a dizzying array of restrictions.
In six related cases consolidated by a lower court, more than two dozen plaintiffs — which include gun-rights groups, gun shop owners and individual Illinois residents — contended bans like those passed in Illinois are unconstitutional under the new test.
The lawsuits each challenge Illinois’s law or similar ordinances passed in Chicago, Cook County and Naperville.
“This Court needs to intervene before this open defiance spreads further,” lawyers for one group of plaintiffs wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court.
“The Court has repeatedly reminded courts and legislatures that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right. Unfortunately, the Court now needs to instruct them that Bruen—a recent, emphatic 6-3 decision of this Court—is not a second-class precedent,” they continued.
Democrats passed some of the measures following a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., which killed seven people while wounding dozens of others in 2022.
The Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case on their emergency docket twice previously. In May, the justices turned away a challenge to a similar ban on assault-style rifles in Maryland.
In court papers, Illinois and the three local governments urged the Supreme Court to continue staying out of the case and let the lower ruling stand that keeps in place the various restrictions.
“There is thus no conflict among the federal courts of appeal on the question presented,” their attorneys wrote.
“Meanwhile, the question continues to percolate in at least seven circuits. In addition, this case is a poor vehicle to resolve the question presented,” they continued.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court refused the Biden administration’s request to take up various cases implicating the constitutionality of the federal law making it a crime for felons to possess guns.
The court sent those cases and various other Second Amendment petitions, including one that implicates the charge Hunter Biden was convicted of, back to lower courts for another look in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent gun decision.