DOJ Civil Rights Head Questions Carry Ban on Public Transportation

The Justice Department’s new Second Amendment Section hasn’t taken any official action since its formation was announced late last week, but Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon says it will be aggressively challenging state and local gun laws and policies that are infringing on our right to keep and bear arms. 

During a recent appearance on The Joe Pags Show, Dhillon specifically brought up the District of Columbia’s carry laws, noting that it took her six days to get her carry permit (which, honestly, is much improved over the months-long delays that were common before the Trump administration took an interest in those delays). Once she had her permit in hand, though, Dhillon said it’s still virtually impossible for her to lawfully carry in many places in the District of Columbia. 

Your CCW in D.C. is worth not much because you can’t go on the Metro, you can’t go into a government building. You know, you can drive around with it in your car, but not much you can do with it. 

I’m intrigued by Dhillon’s comment about the D.C. Metro’s status as a “gun free zone,” particularly because the Supreme Court could soon decide to take up a case dealing with that very issue. 

Schoenthal v. Raoul is a challenge to the concealed carry ban on public transportation in the state of Illinois and the Chicago Transit Authority. A district court judge found in favor of the plaintiffs , holding that the prohibition likely violates the right to keep and bear arms, but the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision using the dubious argument that “a consistent historical thread prohibits firearms in analogously crowded and confined locations.”

To buttress that argument the Seventh Circuit panel relied on five characteristics it believes can be found in other “gun-free zones.” They, according to the panel:

1) temporarily regulates the manner of carrying firearms; 2) in a crowded and confined space; 3) where that space is defined by a natural tendency to congregate people in greater density than the immediately adjacent areas; 4) that space furthers important societal interests; and 5) the presence of firearms in that space creates a heightened risk to maintaining public safety.”

As the plaintiffs noted in their cert petition to SCOTUS:

It immediately warned, however, that this synthesis was incomplete at best and “that lower courts should not employ this summary of today’s decision as a test in all Second Amendment challenges” because it could easily think of places where it thought firearms should be allowed to be banned but that did not fit the profile it provided. Id. (“We are not certain the principle set forth above would apply to all nuclear power plants.”). The upshot of the Seventh Circuit’s analysis is thus that the Public Transit Ban is constitutional, but beyond that, the circuit refused to say.

If concealed carry can be banned in every “crowded and confined space”, then the right to bear arms could be nullified in virtually every high density neighborhood or city. And while the Seventh Circuit maintains that the carry ban on public transportation only “temporarily” regulates the manner of carrying firearms, the ban imposed by the state of Illinois and the CTA create a situation where every citizen who relies on public transportation to get around is disarmed throughout the entirety of their day, while those who have their own vehicle can continue to exercise that right more broadly.

The defendants had until December 4 to submit their reply to the cert petition, but both Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and Cook County State Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke waived their right to reply, and so far no justice has requested they submit one. Earlier today, though, the Court scheduled Schoenthal v. Raoul to be discussed at its January 9 conference, so maybe we’ll see that request in coming days. 

Under Supreme Court rules it’s too late for Dhillon and her team in the Second Amendment Section to write an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs urging the Supreme Court to take up the case, but the DOJ could still send up some unofficial smoke signals directed at the Supreme Court that indicates its interest in the lawsuit. And if the Court does grant cert, Dhillon and the Second Amendment Section could ask to participate in oral arguments in support of the plaintiffs. 

The quickest way to undo D.C.’s public transportation ban is for SCOTUS to determine that Chicago’s carry ban on public transit is unconstitutional, and I hope the DOJ’s new Second Amendment Section will do what it can to push the justices to grant cert in Schoenthal v. Raoul before they take up the issue next month. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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