Gun advocates and their members under the age of 21 are asking the court to grant summary judgment in their constitutional challenge against Illinois’ “Carry Ban” for gun owners between the ages of 18 and 20.
On March 22, plaintiff attorney David Thompson of Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C., filed a motion for leave to supplement summary judgment with a declaration by Jacob Fournie.
“Plaintiffs seek to supplement the record with evidence showing the organizational plaintiffs have at least one other member who is an 18-to-20-year-old adult harmed by the Carry Ban and so this court’s jurisdiction is secure,” he wrote.
Thompson wrote that the plaintiffs’ claims are time-bound and “may present a question of mootness when they turn 21.”
All parties involved in the case have filed motions for summary judgment, which are all currently pending in U.S. District Judge Staci Yandle's courtroom in the Southern District of Illinois.
Plaintiffs Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and Illinois State Rifle Association assert claims and seek summary judgment on behalf of their 18 to 20 year old members who they claim are adversely impacted by the law forbidding adults under 21 years old from carrying firearms outside the home.
The gun advocates are joined in their lawsuit by several individual members, the youngest of which is Eva Davis. Because Davis turned 21 in late March, the plaintiffs seek to submit a declaration from Fournie “to avoid any suggestion of mootness in this case.”
Fournie, of St. Clair County, is 19 years old and is a member of the gun advocate groups.
“He desires to carry a handgun in public for self defense but has refrained from doing so because the law challenged in this case makes it illegal to do so and subjects him to the threat of criminal enforcement,” Thompson wrote.
The lawsuit was filed in May 2021 on behalf of the gun advocacy groups and members who were under the age of 21 at that time, including Davis. The lawsuit was filed against Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly, Fayette County State’s Attorney Joshua Morrison, St. Clair County State’s Attorney James Gomric, Kendall County State’s Attorney Eric Weis, Fayette County Sheriff Christopher Palmer, St. Clair County Sheriff Richard Watson and Kendall County Sheriff Dwight Baird.
The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in October 2022 to remove claims against Gomric and Watson and include the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, in which the court concluded that the “Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”
The suit states that the plaintiffs “wish to exercise their fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed right to carry loaded, operable handguns on their person, outside their homes, while in public, for lawful purposes including immediate self-defense.”
“But they cannot because of the laws, regulations, policies, practices, and customs that defendants have been enforcing and continue to actively enforce today,” it continues.
Specifically, they challenge the Illinois law prohibiting citizens between the ages of 18 and 20 years old from carrying a firearm outside of the home.
“At eighteen years of age, law-abiding citizens in this country are considered adults for almost all purposes and certainly for the purposes of the exercise of fundamental constitutional rights,” the suit states. “Yet the State bans such persons from carrying a handgun outside the home or automobile, even though the State allows all other law-abiding adults to obtain a license to carry firearms in public.”
The plaintiffs allege these individuals would be subject to arrest and criminal prosecution for carrying a firearm outside of the home despite acquiring the concealed carry license required by the Firearms Concealed Carry Act.
“Throughout American history, arms carrying was a right available to all peaceable citizens,” the suit states. “Sometimes, it was even a duty.”
“Moreover, young adults between eighteen and twenty-one were fully protected by the Second Amendment at the time of its ratification. Hundreds of statutes from the colonial and founding eras required 18-to-20-year-olds to keep and bear arms,” it continues.
The plaintiffs allege that while the tradition of disarming violent and dangerous individuals has been practiced in the U.S., “there is no tradition of disarming nonviolent people.”
“While the 18-to-20-Year-Old Carry Ban is unconstitutional on its face, it is particularly illegitimate as applied to young women such as Plaintiff Eva Davis,” the suit states. “Females between the ages of 18 and 21 commit violent offenses at an exceptionally low rate, and there is absolutely no basis for broadly prohibiting them from carrying firearms in public.”
The plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment in September 2021, seeking a declaration that the Carry Ban is facially unconstitutional. They argue that there is no debate that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a handgun in public.
“Plaintiffs desire to exercise their constitutional rights but would face prosecution if they did so,” the motion states. “The ‘very existence’ of the Carry Ban ‘stands as a fixed’ and ongoing ‘harm’ to the Second Amendment rights of every 18-to-20-year-old Illinoisan.”
“While all deprivations of a fundamental right call out for court intervention, the harm of the Carry Ban is especially stark with respect to Plaintiff Eva Davis, who as an 18-to-20-year-old woman poses far less of a threat of gun violence than many of the men that Illinois allows to carry and has a demonstrably greater need for a firearm for self defense than those men do,” it continues.
Briefing was stayed on their first motion for summary judgment, but the plaintiffs sought relief a second time on Jan. 6, 2023, after filing their amended complaint in light of the Bruen ruling. Their motion remains pending.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois case number 3:21-cv-518