IL: Federal court rules it is legal to ban guns from Chicago public transportation

A federal appeals court in Chicago on Tuesday overturned a ruling by a lower court that found it unconstitutional for Illinois residents with concealed carry permits to be barred from carrying guns on public transportation.

At issue was whether a new constitutional test requiring gun laws to be “historically” consistent with laws on the books in the 18th Century or earlier was applied correctly by U.S. District Judge Iain Johnston, who last year ruled in favor of four concealed carry license holders who sued the state over the 2013 concealed carry law.

The Rockford-based judge concluded the law’s prohibition of CCL holders carrying guns on Chicago Transit Authority or Metra trains and other public transit violated their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

But the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed with Johnston’s interpretation of the new constitutional standard, established by the conservative 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court majority in the landmark 2022 case of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

“The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to self-defense. It does not bar the people’s representatives from enacting laws—consistent with our nation’s historical tradition of regulation—that ensure public transportation systems remain free from accessible firearms,” the appeals panel wrote. “We are asked whether the state may temporarily disarm its citizens as they travel in crowded and confined metal tubes unlike anything the Founders envisioned. We draw from the lessons of our nation’s historical regulatory traditions and find no Second Amendment violation in such a regulation.”

The decision was delivered by Appeals Court Judge Joshua Kolar, a 2024 appointee to the 7th Circuit by former Democratic President Joe Biden, and concurred with by Appeals Court Judge Amy St. Eve, appointed to the panel by Republican President Donald Trump during his first term in 2018.

When Johnston, an appointee to the bench by Trump in 2020, decided in favor last year of the CCL holders — three of whom are from suburban Chicago and the other from DeKalb County — the law remained intact and the ruling only applied to the four plaintiffs. But David Sigale, their lawyer, had contended it could be “arguably applicable to any CCL holder on any public transportation in Illinois,” while acknowledging its “broader applicability” needed to be made clear.

Sigale could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday on the ruling.

A spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose lawyers are defending the state in the lawsuit, said Wednesday morning his office is “pleased with this decision,” declining further comment.

Aside from public transportation, the 2013 law includes a number of places where CCL holders are not allowed to carry guns such as government buildings, hospitals and stadiums where sporting events are taking place.

In its decision, the appeals panel expanded on how Illinois’ ban on CCL holders carrying guns on public transportation falls under the historical tradition test in Bruen, comparing the bus-and-train setting to where legislators and other public officials convene.

“Sensitive places ‘where weapons were altogether prohibited’ in the 18th and 19th centuries also include ‘legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses,'” the 7th Circuit said. “At the time, there was no dispute that these rules were legal…Thus, ‘courts can use analogies to those historical regulations of ‘sensitive places’ to determine that modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissible.'”

“Historical crowded place restrictions functioned in much the same way, and when those historical regulations differed, it was often due to earlier generations placing an even greater restriction on individuals carrying firearms,” the ruling also stated. “Americans in the Founding era, and through Reconstruction, accepted that their Second Amendment rights weakened in certain spaces.”

The case was among several legal challenges to Illinois gun laws in the last few years.

Perhaps most notably, challenges by gun rights advocates to the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons, which was signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in January 2023, have largely been unsuccessful. That ban, which applies to many high-powered semiautomatic guns and high-capacity ammunition magazines, was put into place following a mass shooting at Highland Park’s 2022 Fourth of July parade that left seven people dead and dozens more injured.

The state law requiring Illinoisans to have a firearm owner’s identification card to keep a gun in their homes has also faced challenges over the years by the state court system on constitutional grounds.