A Right to Carry for Illinois

In Illinois, the legislature has enacted a shall-issue concealed-carry licensing bill over Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto. This brings the state into compliance with the orders from U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in the Moore and Shepard cases. Illinois thus becomes the final state to provide some legal means for the people to exercise their right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

Accordingly, Attorney General Lisa Madigan has moved to dismiss Moore and Shepard as moot under the new law and will not petition the U.S. Supreme Court to review these cases. That will leave one right-to-carry case, the matter of Woollard v. Gallagher from Maryland, presently ready for the high court’s attention. Cases out of California, New Jersey, and Hawaii are still waiting for decisions from their respective appeals courts.

With Illinois’ narrow no-issue example mooted, the Supreme Court will have to accept one of these challenges to may-issue licensing schemes … if it intends to rule on the right to carry at all.

Right-to-Carry Litigation in Summary

While the police finished murdering each other in southern California, and the President prepared “massive” proposals for the Congress, the case of Piszczatoski v. Maenza [now Drake v. Jerejian, 1/09/14] was argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. With an en banc review of the decision in Moore v. Madigan looking unlikely, a victory in Piszczatoski would deepen the circuit split created by the loss in Kachalsky v. Cacace and thus make the conflicting jurisprudence even more difficult for the U.S. Supreme Court to avoid reviewing. Here is a summary of the major right-to-carry cases for those keeping score.

Kachalsky v. Cacace	New York	Lost on appeal at USCA2.
Moore v. Madigan	Illinois	Won on appeal at USCA7.
Palmer v. D.C.	D.C.	Won at U.S. District Court.
Drake v. Jerejian	New Jersey	Lost on appeal at USCA3.
Peruta v. San Diego	California	Petitioned to U.S. Supreme Court.
Richards v. Prieto	California	Lost on rehearing at USCA9.
Woollard v. Gallagher	Maryland	Lost on appeal at USCA4.

There is a host of other right-to-arms cases that are working their way through the federal court system, but this is the vanguard litigation. A historical turning point is at hand, though some people can’t or won’t see the important civil-rights implications at work here. Few people need to carry guns, they argue, but then very few people needed to abort pregnancies … or to marry the spouses of their choice … or to ride at the front of the bus.

Victory at the Seventh Circuit

Today brought a somewhat unexpected victory on appeal for two right-to-carry cases out of Illinois. The panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has ruled that the state’s sweeping prohibition is unconstitutional and has remanded the cases with orders for corrective legislation.

The theoretical and empirical evidence … is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense. Illinois had to provide us with more than merely a rational basis for believing that its uniquely sweeping ban is justified.… It has failed to meet this burden. The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment therefore compels us to reverse the decisions in the two cases before us and remand … them to their respective district courts for the entry of declarations of unconstitutionality and permanent injunctions. Nevertheless we order our mandate stayed for 180 days to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment.…

If nothing else, this decision will likely be seen as creating a so-called circuit split, which would generally compel the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case in order to resolve the inconsistency … while possibly also foreclosing the only-in-the-home defenses used thus far.