Within six months of the landmark United States Supreme Court decision of NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022), Illinois disregarded the Court’s clear directives and enacted into law H.B. 5741, the Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA). PICA banned certain semi-automatic rifles and other so-called “assault weapons,” “high capacity” magazines, and other devices, and required existing owners to register with the police as a condition of their continued lawful possession. An NRA-backed lawsuit, Caleb Barnett et al. v. Kwame Raoul et al., was quickly filed in federal court to challenge the law as unconstitutional.
Citing the Bruen decision, the complaint in the case points out that “[a]lmost no other state in the union has ever tried to adopt such an extreme measure — and for good reason, as no less an authority than the Supreme Court has already recognized that semiautomatic rifles ‘traditionally have been widely accepted as lawful’ … All of that dooms any effort to claim that prohibiting these ubiquitous arms is consistent with ‘the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.’”
In the last two years, the case has moved between the federal district court in Illinois (which preliminarily enjoined the bans as a likely violation of the Second Amendment), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (which reversed), and back to the district court after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case at its early stage of the litigation. After the district court again ruled that the bans are unconstitutional and entered a permanent injunction against their enforcement, the State appealed to the Seventh Circuit, which stayed the district court’s ruling pending its latest decision in the case.
Notably, in June the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a 34-page amicus brief in the Seventh Circuit on behalf of the United States and in support of the plaintiffs-appellees. The brief represents a stark and welcome contrast to the position of the previous administration with respect to Second Amendment rights. While President Biden’s gun control wishlist included banning “assault weapons,” “high capacity” magazines, a background check mandate for all gun sales, and a repeal of the PLCAA, for instance, the brief cites, among other authorities, an April 2025 memo from the U.S. Attorney General that begins, “For too long, the Second Amendment, which establishes the fundamental individual right of Americans to keep and bear arms, has been treated as a second-class right. No more. It is the policy of this Department of Justice to use its full might to protect the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.” (The brief also cites to a paper co-written by Joseph Greenlee, now Managing Director of the Office of Litigation Counsel at NRA-ILA.)
Since then, the DOJ has filed an unopposed motion, now granted, to participate in oral argument before the Seventh Circuit, noting the federal government’s interest in protecting the Second Amendment rights of all Americans and its belief that “its participation in oral argument will be helpful to the Court.” The argument would be limited to five minutes of time that has been ceded by the plaintiffs-appellees.
While we’ll have to wait until September 22, the date on which oral arguments are scheduled to be held, to find out exactly what the federal government has to say, its amicus brief provides some helpful indications. Because PICA bans arms that are commonly possessed for lawful purposes – including AR-style rifles and standard-capacity magazines – it is “flatly unconstitutional” under the Supreme Court’s test for Second Amendment challenges. The brief also explains how the Seventh Circuit misapplied the Supreme Court’s test the last time it ruled on this case, and urged the court to affirm the district court’s permanent injunction.
In addition to signaling a momentous shift in how the federal government views the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, the DOJ’s participation is particularly meaningful because similar bans are being litigated in other states: for instance, an NRA-supported challenge to New Jersey’s prohibitions on so-called “assault firearms” and magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds is scheduled to be argued before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, en banc, in mid-October.
Please stay tuned to www.nraila.org for future updates on NRA-ILA’s defense of your constitutional rights, and visit www.nraila.org/litigation to keep current on NRA-ILA’s litigation activities.
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