Illinois gun ban provokes legislative shortcuts

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — With all the fanfare and legal chatter surrounding Illinois’ semi-automatic gun ban, it may come as a surprise to learn that the legislation is titled “Insurance Code-Public Adjusters.”

For thousands of gun owners and dealers who have filed lawsuits about it, the title illustrates how lawmakers swung back and forth over the past month to enact legislation sparked by the fatal shooting at the Independence Day parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park .

The ban on dozens of semi-automatic rifles and handguns went into effect immediately, but enforcement is under scrutiny after a state appeals court last week approved an injunction in a case filed by thousands of attorneys and by Accuracy Firearms, a dealer in Effingham , 101 miles (162 kilometers) northeast of St. Louis.

The regulation, which is less than four weeks old and now known as the Protect Illinois Communities Act, has resulted in more than one lawsuit every four days. Four cases have landed in federal courts, arguing a simple principle: The ban violates the Second Amendment right to keep and carry guns.

Others take a different route, generally alleging in circuit courts that the trial violated the requirements of the Illinois Constitution, that the legislation receives three public readings in both houses on three separate days, and that each bill is limited to a single issue .

Additionally, an argument by Accuracy Firearms — which led to an injunction with nationwide ramifications from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals — says the law violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by excluding certain categories of people, such as law enforcement officers and retired police officers.

“Perhaps some of the plaintiffs’ education is equal to or better than that of the exempt classes,” the appeals court said in its opinion granting the injunction.

Given the checkered history of judicial enforcement of the one-subject and three-read rules, the appeals court was less confident about gun rights attorneys’ chances on those counts. But nothing will stop Accuracy Firearms from filing those complaints if the case returns to district court, said company attorney Thomas DeVore.

The proposal, which became the Gun Act, was introduced more than a year ago as an amendment to the Insurance Code, which establishes duties and contractual obligations between a public appraiser and a policyholder. It was “read” on three separate days in the House of Representatives and two in the Senate — that is, by title only.

Shortly before the final Senate reading on Jan. 9, gun bans were replaced as an issue — a routine tactic known colloquially as “gut and replace” succeeded in a bare vote of approval in the House of Representatives and was sent to Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker for a obtain a gun ban.

“It no longer dealt with the issue of adjusters and their contracts, since its new subject was changing entirely different laws,” claims a lawsuit brought by Rep. Dan Caulkins, a Decatur Republican, 182 miles (293 kilometers) south of Chicago. As a new bill, it warrants three new House readings, Caulkins argued.

On the single subjects front, Accuracy Firearms claims the law is far from a single executive order, ordering human trafficking investigations, changing the Illinois State Police’s technology procurement rules, modifying firearm restraining orders, and more.

The one-subject rule predates Illinois itself. It dates back to 1795, when a permit for the sale of large tracts of land to presumed-beneficiary corporations was buried in Georgia’s legislature, according to an article by Michael Kasper in Loyola University’s Law Journal 2009. He is a former Illinois House Member of Parliament who is now representing Democratic Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch in three gun lawsuits in state courts.

After decades of silence, the Illinois Supreme Court cracked down on individual shenanigans in several high-profile cases in the late 1990s, such as voiding laws that increased gasoline taxes to fund leaky cleaning of underground storage tanks, which became necessary votes by including that created the state’s first sex offender registry, Kasper wrote.

But the court has typically played liberally in its requirement for a “natural and logical connection” between the subjects of a single bill.

It was even less zealous on the three-reading rule, save for a case from the 1990s in which the Supreme Court found the legislature’s “remarkably poor self-discipline in overseeing itself.”

The legislature’s own rules allow changes along the three-reading route, Kasper said. The separate readings provide pauses in action for amendments, said Ann Lousin, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

“There’s nothing about it that says you have to go to a committee and hold public hearings,” said Lousin, who was a research fellow at the Illinois constitutional convention of 1970 and later a member of the House of Representatives under Republican Speaker W. Robert Blair. “People think it’s public hearings, but it’s three readings.”

Both Kasper and Lousin agree that there is little chance of succeeding in a three-reading challenge due to the so-called rule of the inscribed bill. It essentially states that a law cannot be challenged if both the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Speaker of the Senate certify that all rules have been followed. Although this 1970 amendment seemed ripe for abuse, Lousin said it replaced a rule that often resulted in cumbersome, complicated legal steps over the procedure and the way actions were recorded.

“As it stands today, the Illinois Supreme Court doesn’t seem to think much of the one-subject rule,” Lousin said enshrined Bill Rule doctrine.

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John O’connor, The Associated Press

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