US appeals court reverses lower court, approves Illinois ban on carrying firearms on public transit

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — A federal appeals court has approved Illinois’ ban on carrying firearms on public transit, reversing a lower court decision that found the prohibition violated the Second Amendment.

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.