The Supreme Court declined to immediately block Illinois’s assault weapons and high-capacity magazine bans, leaving them in place, for now.
A gun rights group and gun shop owner asked the justices to pause the law’s enforcement by intervening in the case ahead of an appeals court’s final ruling. The lawsuit also challenges an ordinance in Naperville, Ill., that bans the sale of assault rifles.
The justices, in a brief, unsigned order, declined to step in at this stage of the case, which could ultimately return to the Supreme Court on the merits.
Last summer, the conservative majority handed down the court’s largest expansion of gun rights in more than a decade, ruling that gun control measures must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
A number of Democratic-led states passed new gun laws following the decision, and lawsuits were quickly filed.
But the Supreme Court has since on three occasions declined to take an aggressive approach using the court’s emergency docket, which only involves minimal briefing and no oral argument, to intervene in gun law challenges.
In Illinois, Democrats looked to pass new gun control measures following a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., which killed seven people while wounding dozens of others.
The city of Naperville, located about 35 miles southwest of Highland Park, passed an ordinance last August that bans the sale of assault rifles, defined to include 26 categories of weapons or other firearms that meet certain criteria. It went into effect in January.
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A federal jury on Tuesday convicted four top lobbyists and executives at a state-regulated utility in Illinois’ highest-profile corruption case since former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted 13 years ago.
