State Supreme Court declines to rule on FOID Act for second time
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[June 18, 2022]
By JERRY NOWICKI
Capitol News Illinois
jnowicki@capitolnewsillinois.com
SPRINGFIELD – In a 4-3 decision with a
blistering dissent from the Republican minority, the Illinois Supreme
Court declined to rule on a question of whether Illinois Firearm Owners
Identification Act is unconstitutional.
It was the second time the case of the People v. Vivian Brown came
before the court and the second time the court declined to rule on the
constitutionality of the state statute requiring Illinoisans to receive
a permit to legally own a gun.
The majority opinion released Thursday was written by Chief Justice Anne
M. Burke and was procedural in nature. It contended that the White
County Circuit Court failed to adhere to the Supreme Court’s previous
2020 ruling in the case, so it once again vacated the lower court’s
ruling that the FOID Act was unconstitutional.
Burke was joined in the majority by Democrats Mary Jane Theis, P. Scott
Neville Jr. and Robert Carter.
Justice Michael Burke – who is not related to the chief justice – wrote
the dissent, making up 11 of the 21 pages in the Thursday order.
He argued the majority decision was “based on a misunderstanding of the
record and a misreading of this court’s precedents,” and that it could
keep the defendant in “legal limbo” for an untold period of years.
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The case involves a White County resident, Vivian Claudine Brown, who
was charged in March 2017 with possession of a firearm without a FOID
card after police responded to her estranged husband’s call that she had
fired a gun in her home.
Police found the rifle but no evidence that she fired it. Nonetheless,
she was charged with the crime.
But a circuit judge in White County threw out the charge, ruling that
the fees and forms required to receive a FOID imposed an
unconstitutional burden on Brown’s Second Amendment right to keep a
firearm in her own home.
But it was an alternative ruling made by the same court without
prompting from Brown’s legal team that allowed the state’s high court to
decline to rule on the constitutional grounds.
That alternative ruling contended that the Illinois General Assembly,
when it passed the FOID Act, never meant for it to apply in the home,
because if it did, it would mean anybody with knowledge of a firearm and
exclusive control over the area where it was kept could be construed as
possessing the gun.
As a general rule, courts decline to rule on constitutional matters when
a case can be decided on other grounds.
Because the circuit court ruled on an aspect of the FOID Act pertaining
to state law, the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision vacated the order
pertaining to constitutionality and sent the matter back to White County
to “permit the normal appellate process to run its course.”
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![](../images/061822PIX/news_b45.jpg)
Chief Justice Anne M. Burke, pictured in a file
photo, wrote a majority opinion that was released this week in which
the Supreme Court declined to rule on the constitutionality of the
state's Firearm Owners Identification Act. (Credit:
Blueroomstream.com)
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jun/18/images/ads/current/graue_22SILVERADO_061822.png)
The ruling was essentially a win for Brown, but her legal team contended
it wouldn’t stand up to an appeal. Thus, Brown’s attorneys filed a
motion to reconsider, arguing that the inevitable loss on appeal would
delay clarity in the case.
The circuit court agreed and reinstated the charges. Brown’s attorneys
then filed a new motion to dismiss on constitutional grounds, which the
judge upheld, finding that “any fee associated with exercising the core
fundamental Constitutional right of armed self-defense within the
confines of one’s home violates the Second Amendment.”
Thus, the state appealed the ruling back to the Supreme Court, leading
to the Thursday ruling in which the majority decided the lower court had
no authority to reconsider the case after the Supreme Court’s 2020
ruling.
“When a cause is ‘remanded by the reviewing court with instructions to
the circuit court to enter a specific order, the reviewing court’s
judgment is, with respect to the merits, ‘the end of the case,’ and
there is ‘nothing which the circuit court [is] authorized to do but
enter the decree,’’” the court wrote, quoting other case law.
If the lower court were allowed to make changes to the Supreme Court’s
ruling, the majority wrote, it would set a precedent “upending our
hierarchical judicial system.”
The dissent from Michael Burke, however, argued that the majority
asserted finality of its ruling while also suggesting that the proper
place for review is now an appellate court, which is itself a lower
court.
“In reality, the judgment of the circuit court was not a judgment of
this court that was final and conclusive on all the parties because this
court declined to reach the merits of the statutory analysis and only
vacated the circuit court’s judgment on procedural grounds,” Michael
Burke wrote in the dissent. “Accordingly, the trial court was free to
reconsider the merits of that ruling, and nothing about it doing so
upends our hierarchical judicial system.”
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Jun/18/images/ads/current/sorrentos_sda_HEROS_2022.png)
Michael Burke argued that the majority’s supposition that Brown received
“complete relief” when the circuit court vacated her charges was faulty,
because the legal reasoning backing that decision is unlikely to hold up
upon appeal.
Thus, he predicted, the case will ultimately end up back at the Supreme
Court on the constitutional basis, only after a significant delay to
Brown’s detriment as the case moves through the appellate court.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news
service covering state government that is distributed to more than 400
newspapers statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press
Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. |