Our side had a strong win today with Judge McGlynn in the Southern District Court. In this trial on the merits of our case, he ruled in our favor and found the PICA “Assault Weapons” Ban to be unconstitutional.
As expected, Judge McGlynn has stayed his injunction, meaning his injunction is not in force for 30 days so that the State may appeal. The process is very much unchanged from our last blog post on the topic.
The State will likely appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
We believe this appeal will be heard by the same panel as before.
- Easterbrook (boo)
- Brennan (yay)
- TBD #3. Judge Diane Wood resigned from the bench this summer. It is not known how the new member will be chosen, nor even if it will be the same panel.
Reasons for Optimism
The existing panel is split 50/50 at the moment. We are now canvasing the members of the Circuit to assess the likelihood of a random assignment being good or bad for us. As we noted in the last blog post, Judge Easterbrook left the door open for being convinced that an AR-15 is not the same thing as an M4 or M16. Moreover, Judge McGlynn in his 168 pages of fire rejected the notion of severability:
This Court also recognizes that Illinois’s definition of “assault weapons” may be referenced elsewhere in the statutory scheme and that future legislation may be passed that does not offend the Second Amendment. However, this Court is unable to determine a reasonable way to sever the offensive portions of PICA such that what remains would have been enacted by the legislature, or is operative as a law. Therefore, this Court holds that the operative provisions of PICA cannot be severed from the whole and must be stricken in the entirety. In other words, The Court finds that Illinois's definition of "assault weapons" cannot be reasonably severed from PICA, so the entire statute must be struck down.
All eyes now turn to the Supreme Court of the United States and whether or not they hear the Snope case, and the Maryland “Assault Weapons” Ban. If they do, all other litigation is paused pending their decision. If they do not, we proceed with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
