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Supreme Court Rules ‘Home Equity Theft’ Is Theft Even When Your County Government Does It

May 26, 2023 by streiff Leave a Comment

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on Thursday in favor of a 94-year-old widow in her battle with a rapacious Hennepin County, MN, government which sold her home for a small tax debt and pocketed the change.

The story starts in 1999 when Geralidein Tyler bought a condo in Minneapolis. In 2010, she decided, for a variety of reasons, to move into a retirement community. The financial strain of paying a mortgage, condo fees, and rent on her retirement apartment caused Tyler to fall behind on her property taxes. By 2015, she owed $2,300 in back taxes, onto which the county had slapped interest and penalties, bringing the total to $15,000. The county confiscated Tyler’s title to the property and sold it at a tax auction for $40,000. The county applied $15,000 of the proceeds to Tyler’s debt and kept the rest. They reasoned that once the county confiscated her title, she no longer owned the property and was not entitled to anything. This left Tyler on the hook for a $50,000 mortgage and $12,000 in condo fees.

Equity Theft

Tyler’s case is not unusual. A dozen states permit city and county governments to sell the property at auction to settle tax claims and pocket the difference.

Supreme Court Rules 'Home Equity Theft' Is Theft Even When Your County Government Does It

Tyler sued, making two claims. First, she said that the county confiscating the proceeds in excess of the back taxes and fees was a taking prohibited under the Fifth Amendment. She also claimed that fines and fees for delinquent taxes that ballooned a $2,300 bill to $15,000 violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition on “excessive fines.” The district court dismissed the case, reasoning that Tyler had no claim to the proceeds under Minnesota law and no grounds to challenge the fines and fees.

Takings Clause

She appealed to the Eighth Circuit, which gave the case a bum’s rush. Then Tyler turned to the Supreme Court. Thursday, they delivered a resounding 9-0 verdict in Tyler’s favor.

Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice John Roberts began by addressing – and rejecting – the county’s argument that Tyler lacked a legal right, known as standing, to bring her takings claim at all. The county contended that Tyler was not actually harmed by the sale of her condo because she may have also had a mortgage for $49,000 on the property, as well as a $12,000 lien for unpaid homeowners’ association fees.

The justices dismissed the county’s protests as speculation, noting that the county had never actually provided evidence of either the mortgage or the lien. But in any event, Roberts continued, “Tyler still plausibly alleges a financial harm: The County has kept $25,000 that belongs to her.” If she had received that money, Roberts wrote, Tyler could have used it to pay down some of the debts linked to the condo.

Turning to the merits of Tyler’s challenge, Roberts framed the question before the justices as whether the $25,000 surplus remaining after Tyler’s condo was sold to pay her tax debt to the county is “property” for purposes of the takings clause. The county pointed to a 1935 state law that strips an owner who falls behind on her property taxes of her interest in the property. Therefore, the county argued, there was no property for the government to take.

The court disagreed, stressing that “property rights cannot be so easily manipulated.” Indeed, Roberts observed, even Minnesota itself “recognizes that in other contexts a property owner is entitled to the surplus in excess of her debt.” Although the county can sell Tyler’s condo to recover the $15,000 that she owes it, Roberts wrote, it cannot “use the toehold of the tax debt to confiscate more property than was due.” By keeping the $25,000, Roberts concluded, the county “effected a ‘classic taking in which the government directly appropriates private property for its own use.’”

Excessive Fines Clause
Supreme Court Rules 'Home Equity Theft' Is Theft Even When Your County Government Does It

The court did not rule on the “excessive fines” claim, but the concurrence by Justice Gorsuch indicates that Hennepin County would not have fared better on that issue.

The Court reverses the Eighth Circuit’s dismissal of Ger-aldine Tyler’s suit and holds that she has plausibly alleged a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause. I agree. Given its Takings Clause holding, the Court understandably declines to pass on the question whether the Eighth Circuit committed a further error when it dismissed Ms. Tyler’s claim under the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause. Ante, at 14. But even a cursory review of the District Court’s excessive-fines analysis—which the Eighth Circuit adopted as “well-reasoned,” 26 F. 4th 789, 794(2022)—reveals that it too contains mistakes future lower courts should not be quick to emulate.

…

Economic penalties imposed to deter willful noncompliance with the law are fines by any other name. And the Constitution has something to say about them: They cannot be excessive.

This decision is a great victory for freedom. It follows the same direction the courts have been taking in regards to Civil Asset Forfeiture; see Supreme Court Blasts Civil Asset Forfeiture; Explains to Indiana That the Constitution Applies There and North Carolina Man Scores Huge Victory for Liberty Against Civil Asset Forfeiture.

Opinion in Tyler vs. Hennepin County

Tyler vs. Hennepin County by streiff on Scribd

Filed Under: <![CDATA[excessive fines clause]]>, <![CDATA[Supreme Court]]>, <![CDATA[Takings Clause]]>, <![CDATA[tyler vs. hennepin county]]>, News, Red State

The Supreme Court Dismissed Arizona’s Suit to Retain Title 42 but the Story Is in How Justice Gorsuch Did It

May 18, 2023 by streiff Leave a Comment

Thursday, the US Supreme Court dismissed an effort by Arizona to force the Biden White House to retain emergency provisions of Title 42, US Code, that permitted the expulsion of illegal immigrants without allowing them to apply for asylum. President Trump put The provisions into effect as a measure to deal with the COVID pandemic. This action brings down the curtain on the frightening assault on civil liberties carried out under the cover of protecting us from a virus.

The question at hand was whether states could sue the federal government to force it to retain the policy in place. However, as the Biden White House ended the COVID National Emergency on May 11, the Supreme Court’s order returned the case to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit with directions to dismiss it as moot.

The path that led to today was a long, convoluted, and ugly. This is the history provided by the National Association of Attorneys General.

The intervention question arises in the context of litigation challenging the Title 42 policy and the Biden’s administration’s efforts to terminate it. In January 2021, a group of asylum-seeking families filed the underlying challenge to the policy in federal district court in D.C.

This was a quintessential “sue and settle” case where the federal government appears to have recruited plaintiffs to sue to end Title 42 immigration restrictions. If states were not allowed to intervene in the case, then the Department of Homeland Security completely controlled the outcome.

The district court preliminarily enjoined the policy, but was partially reversed by the D.C. Circuit, which also denied Texas’s request to intervene on appeal. Soon after, in April 2022, the CDC determined that the Title 42 policy was no longer necessary to protect the public health and issued an order terminating it, effective May 23, 2022. A federal district court in Louisiana, however, entered a preliminary nationwide injunction blocking that termination at the request of several States (including the Petitioning States). Louisiana v. CDC, No. 22-cv-885, 2022 WL 1604901 (W.D. La. May 20, 2022). An appeal from that injunction is pending before the Fifth Circuit. Then, on November 15, 2022, the district court in the underlying D.C. case entered summary judgment for the plaintiffs, vacating and setting aside the Title 42 policy. The district court temporarily stayed its order to allow the federal government time to transition its immigration processing system. The federal government then informed the Louisiana district court that the Title 42 policy would be vacated upon the stay’s expiration, at which point there would be “no legal authority for the government to continue to enforce the Title 42 policy.”

Six days after entry of the district court’s judgment, the Petitioning States filed a motion to intervene. But before that request was resolved, the federal government filed a notice stating its intent to appeal and to ask the D.C. Circuit to hold the appeal in abeyance pending the Fifth Circuit’s decision in Louisiana and CDC’s forthcoming notice-and-comment rulemaking to replace the Title 42 policy. Two days after the government filed a notice of appeal with the D.C. Circuit, the Petitioning States requested permission to intervene in the appeal. They also sought, but were denied, a stay pending appeal. The D.C. Circuit denied the intervention request, reasoning that it came too late: the Petitioning States had a “clear opportunity” to seek intervention much earlier, given that they “kn[ew] that their interests in the defense and perpetuation of the Title 42 policy had already diverged or likely would diverge from those of the federal government.” Indeed, Texas (one of the movants) had recognized this divergence when it sought to intervene during the first appeal, and the Petitioning States were alerted to the divergence during the Louisiana litigation.

In seeking review of that ruling, the Petitioning States submit, at the threshold, that they have standing to challenge the Title 42 policy’s termination because it will trigger an increase in border crossings that will cause them economic harm. They submit that the federal government will not adequately represent their interests because, in their view, the government colluded with the plaintiffs to obtain the termination of the Title 42 policy and thus will not vigorously defend it on appeal. The Petitioning States, moreover, contend that the D.C. Circuit incorrectly denied their intervention motion on timeliness grounds. The dispositive point, they say, is that they moved to intervene in the appeal two days after the notice to appeal was filed. They maintain that there was no need to seek intervention earlier in the proceedings because the federal government was previously appropriately defending the Title 42 policy; any such request, they add, would have been futile, as shown by Texas’s unsuccessful attempt to intervene. And granting intervention, they assert, will cause the federal government and the plaintiffs no prejudice, as it will facilitate a resolution of the underlying case on its merits.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the unanimous opinion driving a stake through the shriveled, odiferous heart of the last legal vestige of our shameful response to COVID. First, he lays out the history of the Title 42 restrictions and how those restrictions were used by various parties to drag the federal courts into the fray. I encourage you to read it. Then he goes on to lambaste the courts and legislatures for their performance.

I recite all this tortured procedural history not because I think the Court’s decision today is wrong. Nearly five months ago, I argued that the Court erred when it granted expedited review and issued a stay. As I explained at the time, I do not discount the States’ concerns about what is happening at the border, but “the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis.” And the Court took a serious misstep when it effectively allowed nonparties to this case to manipulate our docket to prolong an emergency decree designed for one crisis in order to address an entirely different one. Today’s dismissal goes some way to correcting that error.

I lay out the history of this case only because it is so typical. Not just as an illustration of the quandaries that can follow when district courts award nationwide relief, a problem I have written about before. Even more importantly, the history of this case illustrates the disruption we have experienced over the last three years in how our laws are made and our freedoms observed.

Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes.

They shuttered businesses and schools public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too.

They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.

Federal executive officials entered the act too. Not just with emergency immigration decrees. They deployed a public-health agency to regulate landlord-tenant relations nationwide.They used a workplace-safety agency to issue a vaccination mandate for most working Americans.

They threatened to fire noncompliant employees, and warned that service members who refused to vaccinate might face dishonorable discharge and confinement. Along the way, it seems federal officials may have pressured social-media companies to suppress information about pandemic policies with which they disagreed.

While executive officials issued new emergency decrees at a furious pace, state legislatures and Congress—the bodies normally responsible for adopting our laws—too often fell silent. Courts bound to protect our liberties addressed a few—but hardly all—of the intrusions upon them. In some cases, like this one, courts even allowed themselves to be used to perpetuate emergency public-health decrees for collateral purposes, itself a form of emergency-lawmaking-by-litigation.

Doubtless, many lessons can be learned from this chapter in our history, and hopefully serious efforts will be made to study it. One lesson might be this: Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces. They can lead to a clamor for action—almost any action—as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.

A leader or an expert who claims he can fix everything, if only we do exactly as he says, can prove an irresistible force. We do not need to confront a bayonet, we need only a nudge, before we willingly abandon the nicety of requiring laws to be adopted by our legislative representatives and accept rule by decree. Along the way, we will accede to the loss of many cherished civil liberties—the right to worship freely, to debate public policy without censorship, to gather with friends and family, or simply to leave our homes.

We may even cheer on those who ask us to disregard our normal lawmaking processes and forfeit our personal freedoms. Of course, this is no new story. Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.

But maybe we have learned another lesson too. The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government. However wise one person or his advisors may be, that is no substitute for the wisdom of the whole of the American people that can be tapped in the legislative process.

Decisions produced by those who indulge no criticism are rarely as good as those produced after robust and uncensored debate. Decisions announced on the fly are rarely as wise as those that come after careful deliberation. Decisions made by a few often yield unintended consequences that may be avoided when more are consulted. Autocracies have always suffered these defects. Maybe, hopefully, we have relearned these lessons too.

In the 1970s, Congress studied the use of emergency decrees. It observed that they can allow executive authori- ties to tap into extraordinary powers. Congress also ob- served that emergency decrees have a habit of long outliving the crises that generate them; some federal emergency proclamations, Congress noted, had remained in effect for years or decades after the emergency in question had passed.

At the same time, Congress recognized that quick unilateral executive action is sometimes necessary and permitted in our constitutional order. In an effort to balance these considerations and ensure a more normal op- eration of our laws and a firmer protection of our liberties, Congress adopted a number of new guardrails in the National Emergencies Act.

Despite that law, the number of declared emergencies has only grown in the ensuing years. And it is hard not to wonder whether, after nearly a half century and in light of our Nation’s recent experience, another look is warranted. It is hard not to wonder, too, whether state legislatures might profitably reexamine the proper scope of emergency executive powers at the state level. At the very least, one can hope that the Judiciary will not soon again allow itself to be part of the problem by permitting litigants to manipulate our docket to perpetuate a decree designed for one emergency to address another. Make no mistake—decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others. And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.

This is some pretty tough rhetoric, and some of it is directed at his colleagues, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts. When COVID restrictions cases began arriving at the Supreme Court in May 2020, Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh resolutely opposed them. Chief Justice Robert usually sided with the liberal bloc because “an unelected judiciary lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people.”

Gorsuch was also one of the dissenters in the Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley vs. Sisolak decision that challenged Nevada’s directive limiting access to churches.

This is a simple case. Under the Governor’s edict, a 10-screen “multiplex” may host 500 moviegoers at any time. A casino, too, may cater to hundreds at once, with perhaps six people huddled at each craps table here and a similar number gathered around every roulette wheel there. Large numbers and close quarters are fine in such places. But churches, synagogues, and mosques are banned from admitting more than 50 worshippers—no matter how large the building, how distant the individuals, how many wear face masks, no matter the precautions at all. In Nevada, it seems, it is better to be in entertainment than religion. Maybe that is nothing new. But the First Amendment prohibits such obvious discrimination against the exercise of religion. The world we inhabit today, with a pandemic upon us, poses unusual challenges. But there is no world in which the Constitution permits Nevada to favor Caesars Palace over Calvary Chapel.

It is sort of unfortunate this case ended with such a whimper, resembling an elephant giving birth to an field mouse. I think states, as sovereign entities should have the right to challenge any and all federal regulations that have an impact of how the state government operates. But Gorsuch has this right. The Title 42 restrictions have long since run their course and the were being used as a proxy in the fight over the Biden White House’s lawless immigration policy. At best they were questionable. They were probably unconstitutional when President Trump put them into force. It seems like at least one justice has learned the right lesson from what we went through.

Opinion in Arizona vs. Mayorkas

Arizona vs. Mayorkas by streiff at redstate on Scribd

Filed Under: <![CDATA[arizona vs. mayorkas]]>, <![CDATA[Justice Neil Gorsuch]]>, <![CDATA[Supreme Court]]>, <![CDATA[Title 42]]>, News, Red State

Gun control fans shouldn’t get too excited about Illinois

May 18, 2023 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

For those who think gun control is the answer to our nation’s woes, the recent decision by the Supreme Court to not get involved in the current dispute in Illinois at this time is a huge win…. at least in their view.

Yet as Cam discussed on his show today, they shouldn’t get too excited because in the long term, Wednesday’s decision means very little. And if you want a second opinion, the Heritage Foundation’s Amy Swearer also believes things still don’t look good for them.

By declining to intervene Wednesday morning, the Supreme Court didn’t make any decision about the constitutionality of the Illinois law. Instead, the high court merely allowed Illinois to begin enforcing the law’s provisions.

Yes, it’s disappointing that the law will go into effect for the time being. But this is neither a significant victory for gun control advocates nor a reason for Second Amendment advocates to be alarmed.

It’s common for the Supreme Court to refrain from intervening in these types of cases at such an early stage in the litigation process. It does so for prudent reasons that have nothing to do with how the court might ultimately consider the underlying constitutional question.

Emergency interventions such as the one sought here require the Supreme Court to make decisions without the benefit of a robust factual record, extensive briefing from the parties, or ability to ask questions at oral argument. They also leave the court with far less time to consider important issues and reach well-reasoned decisions.

The Supreme Court has shown particular restraint when it comes to intervening in the myriad post-Bruen legal challenges under the Second Amendment that have worked their way through the lower courts over the past year.

No one knows for sure why the justices decline emergency intervention in some cases and not in others. However, one likely reason for their restraint in recent Second Amendment cases is that they’d like to give lower courts plenty of opportunity to try their hand at faithfully implementing Bruen’s framework.

Swearer is quite possibly correct in this interpretation. The Court may not want to be too heavy-handed right here, right now.

Bruen laid out new groundwork for how Second Amendment cases are to be decided. It’ll take a bit of time to build an understanding of just how to use that.

Yet it also seems pretty clear that there’s little ground to justify banning AR-15s and similar rifles if one uses the text and history standard presented in Bruen. The best argument I’ve found was the ban on Bowie knives, but since that dates to around 1850 or so, it’s not a great argument since that’s not around the time of the nation’s founding except on a geological scale.

Basically, as Swearer notes, this is a setback, but it’s not likely to result in the Illinois ban–or any other bit of gun control one cares to name–being upheld in the long term.

Like it or not, folks, gun control will be limited until and unless the Bruen decision is somehow overturned. That’s not nearly as likely to happen as some folks would like to believe, either.

Filed Under: <![CDATA[Gun Control]]>, <![CDATA[Gun Rights]]>, <![CDATA[Guns]]>, <![CDATA[Illinois]]>, <![CDATA[Supreme Court]]>, <![CDATA[Video]]>, Bearing Arms, News

Clearing up the anti-gun spin on SCOTUS and the IL gun ban

May 18, 2023 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

Did the Supreme Court uphold a ban on so-called “assault weapons” this week or deliver gun control advocates an historic victory? Not at all, but you’d never know it if you’re consuming the absurd narrative advanced by the anti-gun media.

Take this headline from Newsweek, for example: Conservative Supreme Court Justices Side With Gun Control Advocates. No, the conservative wing of the court didn’t side with anti-gunners. They declined to grant an emergency injunction blocking the state’s gun and magazine ban from being enforced, but the Court gave no indication of why that was the case, though the likeliest explanation is that the Court didn’t want to get ahead of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which has yet to issue its own ruling on a request for an injunction. In fact, the Seventh Circuit has expedited its briefing schedule in these legal challenges, and it’s likely that SCOTUS simply wants to give the appeals court the opportunity to weigh in before it considers any legal challenge.

The Illinois lawsuits also aren’t the only litigation involving a gun ban. A three judge panel on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a challenge to Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban last December, and has yet to issue its ruling. SCOTUS granted cert in Bianchi v. Frosh shortly after its decision in Bruen, vacating a lower court decision upholding the state ban and remanding the case back to the Fourth Circuit for reconsideration in light of Bruen. Given that the Court has already expressed an interest in that case, it could also be that a majority of the justices are waiting for Bianchi to once again reach its doorstep and that will be the vehicle the Court uses to address the constitutionality of AR-15s and other modern sporting rifles.

In its order on Wednesday, the Supreme Court neither endorsed a ban on AR-15s nor ruled those prohibitions out of step with the Second Amendment. It simply declined to intervene at a very early stage in one particular legal case; a decision that is frustrating to gun owners and 2A advocates, but hardly the “victory” that some gun prohibitionists are touting.

“This is a great victory for Americans and all of us working to protect our children from the gun violence epidemic facing our nation,” said Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, senior adviser to advocacy group Giffords. “With this ruling the Supreme Court once again reaffirms the rights of legislators and local officials to pass gun safety laws.”

The court did no such thing. In fact, Wednesday’s order affirmed nothing other than what we already know: after Bruen SCOTUS seems inclined to see how lower courts will react and respond to the ruling rather than intervening at the first available opportunity. We saw this in the Antonyuk case dealing with New York’s post-Bruen concealed carry restrictions, and we’ve seen nothing from the Court in the months since that would indicate yesterday’s decision not to intervene is based on anything other than their earlier rationale.

Of course I would have preferred the Court grant relief to the Illinois plaintiffs yesterday, but the anti-gunners are reading way too much into the justice’s decision to keep the law in place while the appeals process continues on an expedited basis. They can try to spin this as some huge victory, but that will just make their ultimate defeat even sweeter when the justices finally decide the time is ripe for them to weigh in on whether or not the most commonly-sold rifle in the country is protected by our right to keep and bear arms.

Filed Under: <![CDATA[Assault Weapons Ban]]>, <![CDATA[Bevis v. Naperville]]>, <![CDATA[Cam &amp; Co]]>, <![CDATA[Gun Control]]>, <![CDATA[magazine ban]]>, <![CDATA[Supreme Court]]>, <![CDATA[Video]]>, Bearing Arms, News

Supreme Court denies emergency injunction against IL gun, magazine ban

May 17, 2023 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

The Supreme Court has denied a request by the National Association of Gun Rights and an Illinois gun owner to halt enforcement of the state’s ban on the sale of modern sporting rifles and possession of “large capacity” magazines, issuing a brief statement to that effect with no noted dissents from any of the conservative justices on the bench.

The brief order in Bevis v. Naperville provides no explanation for the decision, though it does mention that Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who received the request from NAGR and its attorneys referred the request to the full Court for its consideration.

This is definitely a disappointing development, though not entirely unexpected. The request for an emergency injunction came as the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is considering multiple challenges to the state’s ban, including four cases heard by U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn, who did grant an injunction late last month that was stayed by an order from Seventh Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook less than a week later. Those cases are still pending a full hearing on a request for an injunction along with Bevis v. Naperville, which is on a separate track in the Seventh Circuit.

As Second Amendment attorney Kostas Moros noted on Twitter, today’s decision isn’t entirely unexpected, particularly with the Seventh Circuit expediting these cases.

Not shocking after the 7th circuit issued a fast briefing schedule. pic.twitter.com/osX0MZqK0j

— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) May 17, 2023

Not shocking, but still disappointing, especially given the specious reasoning deployed by the state to defend its ban. As attorney and Second Amendment scholar Stephen Halbrook recently opined, Illinois’ argument flies in the face of the Heller and Bruen decisions.

While granting the emergency application in an interlocutory appeal of this type would be unusual, there are compelling reasons to do so here, as perhaps explained best in the amicus brief filed by Paul Clement and Erin Murphy on behalf of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). As they note, there were only six states with bans last year when New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen was decided, and now there are ten. “Instead of treating Bruen as an occasion to reconsider existing restrictions on constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens, they have enacted new ‘assault weapon’ and/or ‘large-capacity magazine’ bans, with more still on the way.” Quoting phrases from Bruen, they argue:

Rifles, pistols, and shotguns plainly “constitute bearable arms”—i.e., “instruments that facilitate armed self-defense,” …—no matter what kind of grip, stock, ammunition feeding device, or other features they may have. The right to keep and bear them is thus “presumptively protect[ed]” by the Constitution. In breezily concluding that the firearms Illinois has banned are not even “Arms” covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, the district court in this case inexplicably ignored the test that Bruen articulated, and instead simply declared that “[t]he text of the Second Amendment is limited to only certain arms.”

This is a very simple, straightforward case. Going back to basics, the Court held in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) that arms that are “in common use” or that are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes” are protected by the Second Amendment and may not be banned. As the record reflects, there are over 24 million rifles of the types that are banned in the hands of American citizens. Even the State’s brief admits that there are millions of gun owners who possess semiautomatic firearms of the sort banned by Illinois.

This won’t be the last opportunity for the Court to weigh in, nor is it a slam dunk victory that assures Illinois’ ban will ultimately be upheld by the Court. Intervention by SCOTUS at such an early stage would have been fairly extraordinary, as Halbrook acknowledges, but given the fundamental rights at stake I think it still would have been merited. Unfortunately a majority of the Court disagrees and for now Illinois residents are still subjected to an ongoing deprivation of their Second Amendment rights.

Filed Under: <![CDATA[Bevis v. Naperville]]>, <![CDATA[Gun Ban]]>, <![CDATA[Illinois]]>, <![CDATA[magazine ban]]>, <![CDATA[Supreme Court]]>, <![CDATA[Video]]>, Bearing Arms, News

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Joe Biden Celebrates Memorial Day Weekend with Second-Lowest Approval Rating of His Presidency

May 27, 2023 | Wendell Husebo | Leave a Comment

President Joe Biden will celebrate Memorial Day weekend with the second-lowest approval rating of … Read More... about Joe Biden Celebrates Memorial Day Weekend with Second-Lowest Approval Rating of His Presidency

Twelve Shot on Night One of Brandon Johnson’s First Memorial Day Weekend as Chicago Mayor

May 27, 2023 | AWR Hawkins | Leave a Comment

At least 12 people were shot, three fatally, on night one of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s (D) … Read More... about Twelve Shot on Night One of Brandon Johnson’s First Memorial Day Weekend as Chicago Mayor

About those Canadian gun laws…

May 27, 2023 | Tom Knighton | Leave a Comment

Every nation on Earth has more gun laws on the books than the United States does. I see this as a … Read More... about About those Canadian gun laws…

Stephen King Shows Just How Twisted a Liberal Take on the First Amendment Can Be

May 27, 2023 | Nick Arama | Leave a Comment

Stephen King has written a lot of books — some of them have even been made into … Read More... about Stephen King Shows Just How Twisted a Liberal Take on the First Amendment Can Be

Video: Chicago beach closed within hours after opening when gunshots erupt; Gov. Pritzker deploys ‘peacekeepers’ in anticipation of Memorial Day weekend violence

May 27, 2023 | Paul Sacca | Leave a Comment

The city of Chicago opened all 22 area beaches on Friday morning. However, one of the busiest … Read More... about Video: Chicago beach closed within hours after opening when gunshots erupt; Gov. Pritzker deploys ‘peacekeepers’ in anticipation of Memorial Day weekend violence

London’s Green Emissions Tax Will Result in France-Style Revolt, Protesters Warn

May 27, 2023 | Peter Caddle | Leave a Comment

Protesters in London have warned that Sadiq Khan’s green emissions tax on cars will likely result in … Read More... about London’s Green Emissions Tax Will Result in France-Style Revolt, Protesters Warn

Pro-Transgender Mom Says Target Caved to Terrorists by Moving Pride Displays

May 27, 2023 | Neil Munro | Leave a Comment

Executives at Target blamed “threats” for their decision to hide their displays of pride products, … Read More... about Pro-Transgender Mom Says Target Caved to Terrorists by Moving Pride Displays

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