(The Center Square) – The purgatory that Illinois gun rights groups say gun owners have been in with a case challenging the state’s gun ban may be ending.
The state banned the sale and possession of more than 170 semi-automatic firearms and magazines over certain capacities in January 2023. Lawsuits were filed shortly thereafter.
The consolidated cases out of the Southern District of Illinois federal court ended last fall when the judge there ruled in a permanent injunction that the law was unconstitutional. The state immediately appealed and the district judge’s ruling was held pending appeal in December.
On Friday, plaintiffs asked the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to provide a briefing schedule for the case given it’s been four months since the appeals court ordered the district judge’s permanent injunction against the law held at bay pending the state’s appeal.
“The net effect of those orders has been to provide the State a grace period longer than the entire default period for appellate briefing, during which time the State has been able to enforce a law that Plaintiffs claim – and the district court agreed after a trial on remand from this Court – is unconstitutional, without having to defend the law on the merits,” the plaintiffs said. “This case has sat in purgatory long enough.”
Illinois State Rifle Association’s Ed Sullivan said gun owners need finality.
“We believe that the attorney general in the state has been dragging their feet, and we believe they’ve been doing it for one specific purpose. We need to have this court case to go through the courts to get to the U.S. Supreme Court for a potential to be heard by October,” Sullivan told The Center Square.
ISRA is one of the plaintiffs in the consolidated case.
Sullivan said plaintiffs had to request the case be sped up.
“And so you know, finally they forced our hand and so we had to do something to move this along in light of the deadline that we’re seeing for anything to go to the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said.
On Monday, the appeals court gave the state until May 7 to file their brief. Plaintiffs will then have to file their brief by June 6. The state’s reply brief is due June 27.
There was no oral argument schedule listed.
