Illinois Public Transportation Gun Ban Held Unconstitutional

An Illinois law that prevents citizens who are licensed to carry concealed weapons from bringing their firearms on public transportation violates their Second Amendment right to carry guns for self defense, a federal court said.

The state failed to show “an American tradition” of gun regulation dating back to the Founding that would allow the public transportation ban, Judge Iain D. Johnston said Aug. 30, applying the US Supreme Court’s framework from N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

The state first argued that the Bruen test was inapplicable, because the state, as a property owner can regulate what people bring on its property. Johnston rejected that argument, calling it “breathtaking, jawdropping, and eyepop-ping.” Among other things, he said that the “constitutional protection afforded to other individual rights isn’t nullified on public property.”

The plain text of the Second Amendment applies to the regulated conduct here, Johnston said. But the state didn’t provide any historical analogues to support the public transportation ban, he said.

The regulation of guns in crowded places in England and some US states, weren’t sufficient analogues, “because why they burdened the right to armed self-defense is not sufficiently similar” to the Illinois ban, Johnston said. An 1871 Texas law regulating handguns was an outlier and laws from several other states were insufficient to show a national tradition of handgun regulation to support the Illinois ban, he said.

Public transportation also isn’t a sensitive place where firearms can be regulated, Johnston said. Though trains and buses are moving vehicles with no escape, the state didn’t properly analogize them to enumerated sensitive places, such as government buildings and schools, or provide any evidence to support the creation of a new sensitive place category. he said.

Treating “any place where the government would want to protect public order and safety as a sensitive place casts too wide a net—this would seem to justify almost any gun restriction,” Johnston said.

David G. Sigale of Lombard, Ill., represents the plaintiffs. The Illinois Attorney General’s Office represents the state.

The case is Schoenthal v. Raoul, 2024 BL 304670, N.D. Ill., No. 3:22-cv-50326, 8/30/24.