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The 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals delivered its opinion on
Tuesday. Judge Joshua Kolar wrote in the majority opinion for a
three-judge panel that the Illinois restriction “is comfortably
situated in a centuries-old practice of limiting firearms in
sensitive and crowded, confined places.”
In August 2024, the Rockford-based U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of four plaintiffs
who argued that prohibiting guns on public buses and trains was
unconstitutional. It relied on a pivotal 2022 U.S. Supreme Court
ruling known as Bruen that decreed that restrictions on carrying
guns in public must be “relevantly similar,” or consistent, with
conditions that existed in the late 18th century when the Bill
of Rights was composed. It said there were no analogous
conditions that justified the transit ban.
The appeals court found the ban appropriate.
“We are asked whether the state may temporarily disarm its
citizens as they travel in crowded and confined metal tubes
unlike anything the founders envisioned,” Kolar wrote. “We draw
from the lessons of our nation’s historical regulatory
traditions and find no Second Amendment violation in such a
regulation.”
The public transit ban was imposed in 2013 when Illinois became
the last state in the nation to OK carrying concealed weapons in
public. In addition to buses and trains, it nixed gun possession
in places such as public arenas and hospitals.
Joining in the majority opinion with Kolar, who was named to the
court by President Joe Biden in 2024, was Judge Kenneth Ripple,
appointed in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan. Writing a separate
concurring opinion was Judge Amy St. Eve, tabbed for the court
in 2018 by President Donald Trump.
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