Left: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas. Right: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Samuel Alito. (Alex Wong/Getty Images.)
The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to an Illinois ban on semiautomatic rifles and large-capacity magazines Tuesday, leaving in place a federal appellate court ruling that upheld the law. The ruling, however, occurs at the preliminary injunction phase, which means the underlying legality of the ban may well come before the justices at a later date.
Two conservative justices opposed the decision.
Justice Samuel Alito said he would have granted the petition to hear the constitutional challenge to the law.
Justice Clarence Thomas penned a separate statement wherein he said he hopes the Court will hear constitutional challenges to the law at a later stage in the litigation.
The Protect Illinois Communities Act was passed in the wake of the July 4, 2022, shooting in the city of Highland Park that resulted in the death of seven people. It bans the sale of multiple types of semiautomatic assault weapons, including AK-47s and AR-15 rifles, as well as large-capacity magazines. The Illinois Supreme Court upheld the law in August 2023.
The following November, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit refused to issue a preliminary injunction against the law, reasoning that assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, “are much more like machine guns and military-grade weaponry than they are like the many different types of firearms that are used for individual self-defense.”
In his statement, Thomas noted the widespread use of AR-15 rifles and questioned the Seventh Circuit’s finding that such a popular weapon somehow does not fall within “Arms” protected by the Second Amendment. That open question, said Thomas, is why the justices must eventually “provide more guidance on which weapons the Second Amendment covers.”
Thomas went on to characterize the Seventh Circuit’s ruling as “contorting” the Supreme Court’s precedents as it issued a “nonsensical” ruling.
The justice was pretty clear, though, on where he would stand in the future.
“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. “The Court must not permit the Seventh Circuit [to] relegat[e] the Second Amendment to a second-class right.”
Thomas’s statement on the Court’s denial of certiorari comes less than two weeks after he stood alone in a 8-1 ruling to uphold a federal law restricting domestic abusers from possessing firearms. All but Thomas concluded that a federal law restricting felons from possessing firearms survives constitutional scrutiny even without such a law having a “historical twin.” In United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that some lower courts had “misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases,” and advocated for a somewhat narrower reading of recent precedent.
Thomas, however, doubled down on his own words from the Court’s 2022 ruling striking down New York’s handgun licensing regime in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, and demanded a “historical analogue” before upholding the federal restriction on guns.
You can read Thomas’s statement on the denial of certiorari here.
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