BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation has filed a reply brief in its appeal of a lower court ruling upholding an Illinois ban on firearms for the purpose of immediate self-defense in the homes of law-abiding adults licensed to provide day or foster care.
SAF is joined in this action by the Illinois State Rifle Association, Illinois Carry and two private citizens, Darin E. and Jennifer J. Miller. They are represented by attorneys David G. Sigale of Wheaton, Ill., and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and John D. Ohlendorf of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, Washington, D.C.
The appeal is filed in the U.S. Court of appeals for the Seventh Circuit. The case is known as Miller v. Smith.
“Our case dates back to before the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Bruen decision in June of this year,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The Bruen ruling is fatal to the state’s position that rules allowing this gun ban are constitutional. The Bruen ruling did away with the ‘two-step’ approach to determining Second Amendment-based challenges.”
As noted in their brief, SAF and its partners remind the Seventh Circuit that “Modern firearm restrictions must be closely analogous to historical restrictions, and the inquiry into historical analogues does not give the State a regulatory blank check.”
“This is yet another case of Illinois government trying to perpetuate restrictions on law-abiding gun owners contrary to Supreme Court rulings,” Gottlieb observed. “We have lost count of the number of cases we’ve had to file in Illinois, but we are in this for the long haul. It is just one more example of our mission to win firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time.”