With one major gun case looming, US Supreme Court sidesteps others

FILE PHOTO: AR-15 rifles are displayed at an exhibition booth during the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., May 18, 2024. Picture taken with a tilt-shift lens. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

By Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court turned away appeals challenging a Democratic-backed ban in Illinois on assault-style rifles such as AR-15s and sidestepped several other gun-related disputes on Tuesday, though it already has agreed to hear one major firearms case in its next term concerning homemade "ghost guns."

The justices declined to hear a group of cases appealing a lower court's rejection of the argument raised by challengers that the Illinois ban violates the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

The justices also ordered lower courts to re-examine challenges to New York state's Democratic-backed law that bars firearms in numerous "sensitive places" and to federal laws that prohibit gun possession by people convicted of serious crimes and users of illegal drugs.

In these cases, the justices directed the lower courts to reassess their various decisions in light of the Supreme Court's June 21 ruling in a case called U.S. v. Rahimi that upheld a federal law banning domestic abusers from having guns.

The Supreme Court in April agreed to decide the legality of a federal regulation aimed at reining in "ghost guns" as President Joe Biden's administration combats the increasing use of these largely untraceable weapons in crimes nationwide. It is set to hear the case in its next term, which starts in October.

The justices took up the administration's appeal of a lower court's decision finding that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) exceeded its authority in issuing the 2022 rule targeting parts and kits for ghost guns, which can be assembled at home in minutes.

The court in the nine-month term it has just completed issued a pair of important gun rulings. In addition to the Rahimi decision, the justices on June 14 rejected a federal ban on "bump stock" devices that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.

ILLINOIS LAW

The Illinois law bans the sale and distribution of many kinds of high-powered semiautomatic "assault weapons," including AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, as well as large-capacity magazines. It was passed in 2023 after a massacre at a 2022 Independence Day parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park that killed seven people.

The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2023 that the challengers were unlikely to prevail, in part because the Second Amendment does not apply to the banned rifles and magazines, which it concluded "are much more like machine guns and military-grade weaponry than they are like the many different types of firearms that are used for individual self-defense."

The Supreme Court, in a landmark 2008 ruling expanding gun rights, noted that "M-16 rifles and the like" are not protected under the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court on May 20 also declined to hear a challenge to Maryland's assault rifle ban.

Justice Samuel Alito indicated he would have heard the Illinois cases, while fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas in an opinion voiced doubt about the 7th Circuit's decision on the state's ban. Thomas said the matter was still at a preliminary stage and the justices should review it in due course.

The availability of assault rifles, which are popular among gun enthusiasts, continues to provoke fierce debate in a nation bitterly divided over how to address persistent firearms violence including frequent mass shootings.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken an expansive view of Second Amendment rights.

In 2022, it recognized a Second Amendment right to carry a handgun in public for self defense, striking struck down New York state gun limits. That ruling established a legal standard requiring such measures to be comparable with the nation's "historical tradition" of firearm restrictions in order to comply with the Second Amendment.

However, the Rahimi ruling clarified that modern gun restrictions need only a historical "analogue," not a "twin," signaling the limits of the Bruen standard.

The New York law now at issue, enacted after the Bruen ruling, prohibits possessing a gun in "sensitive" locations such as courts, government buildings, schools, medical offices, public parks, theaters and New York City's popular Times Square.

The cases concerning the scope of the ban on felons owning guns included challengers convicted of nonviolent crimes, such as Bryan Range, a Pennsylvania man convicted of welfare fraud. The Biden administration appealed a judicial decision that applying the ban to Range violated his Second Amendment rights.

The administration also appealed a judicial decision backing an admitted marijuana user caught with guns in his car who claimed the drug user gun ban violated his Second Amendment rights. This is the same law under which Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was convicted last month in Delaware.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)