The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a Republican state lawmaker’s request for review of a ruling from Illinois’ high court that upheld the state’s sweeping gun ban, essentially closing the door on one of numerous legal challenges to the law.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of state Rep. Dan Caulkins’ request for review was issued without comment and comes less than a month after Justice Amy Coney Barrett declined to put the law on hold ahead of a Jan. 1 deadline for gun owners to register banned weapons they owned before the law took effect on Jan. 10, 2023.
The high court also last month denied a separate request from gun rights advocates, including a Naperville gun dealer, to temporarily put the ban on hold pending their appeal of an adverse ruling on their lawsuit by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the Caulkins case, the Democratic-controlled Illinois Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in August that the gun ban does not violate the state constitution’s equal protection clause by creating exemptions for certain trained professionals, such as retired police officers, and for people who owned the now-banned firearms at the time the law took effect last year.
The state Supreme Court did not address whether the ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment because the plaintiffs did not directly raise that issue in their lawsuit.
The crux of Caulkins’ appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court was that the state’s high court’s ruling should be invalidated since the decision came after two of its Democratic justices, Elizabeth Rochford and Mary Kay O’Brien, each received $1 million in campaign donations from Gov. J.B. Pritzker during the 2022 election.
Pritzker, a Democrat who signed the ban into law, championed the measure following the mass shooting at the Fourth of July 2022 parade in Highland Park that left seven people dead and dozens injured.
While the state Supreme Court case was being adjudicated, Caulkins’ legal team unsuccessfully sought the recusal of Rochford and O’Brien. Ultimately, Rochford was one of the four justices ruling in favor of upholding the ban, while O’Brien joined Republican colleagues Lisa Holder White and David Overstreet in opposing it.
Caulkins said Monday he was disappointed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to not take up his case and remains convinced his lawsuit did not get a fair hearing before the state’s high court, noting that in addition to the donations from Pritzker, Rochford and O’Brien received $7.3 million from a political action committee that supported Democratic justices in the 2022 election.
That PAC, All for Justice, was issued $99,500 in fines by the State Board of Elections — one of the largest state election fines ever in Illinois — for failing to disclose making those donations until after the election.
“We did not get a fair hearing in the Illinois Supreme Court, so now we’re going to have to look at other options,” the Decatur lawmaker said. “I think anyone who finds themselves at the Illinois Supreme Court has to question their ability to get a fair hearing.”
“I understand the U.S. Supreme Court, they don’t take every case,” he said. “We at least got their attention, and I think we’ve also gotten the attention of people in Illinois and probably around the country the problems that we face here in Illinois with ethics and some of the challenges that we have.”
Pritzker celebrated the decision in a post on one of his political social media accounts.
“No matter the roadblocks, I’ll never stop fighting against the gun lobby’s dangerous agenda,” he wrote.
The law bans the delivery, sale, import and purchase of a long list of so-called assault weapons. Also banned are the delivery, sale or purchase of large capacity ammunition magazines of more than 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns.
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