IL FOID litigants given deadline to provide joint status report

Plaintiffs suing over the ID requirement to own and possess not just guns but ammunition say it violates their Second and 14th Amendment rights. Attorney Jacob Huebert of the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed the lawsuit in May, saying it’s been around since 1967.

“And people have been decrying this as a violation of Second Amendment rights, all along,” Huebert told The Center Square in May. “But nobody until now, to my knowledge, has brought a federal lawsuit like this one asking the courts to strike it down, because it violates not only the Second Amendment, but also your right not to be deprived of your liberty without due process of law to get the phone card.”

Huebert said the U.S. Supreme Court has already made clear that gun laws today must have an historical sibling from the founding era.

“[The FOID card] totally denies everyone the right to keep and bear arms completely unless and until they get this card,” Huebert said. “And so then we look at are there any historical analogs? Was there anything like what Illinois is doing at the time of the founding? And, of course there wasn’t.”

Illinois State Police and Cook County asked for a delay in their response, which was initially due in June. A judge granted that extension. The eventual response was provided earlier this month. Defendants denied the law violates civil liberties, among the 75 other allegations made through the complaint.

The defendants say plaintiffs don’t have standing, “because they have not suffered harm from the defendants’ actions,” that the FOID card is a constitutional shall-issue licensing regime and is “consistent with the Nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation.”

Defendants said they “deny that Plaintiff is entitled to the relief requested in Plaintiff’s complaint and pray that this honorable Court enter judgment against Plaintiff and in favor of Defendants and such other relief as it deems appropriate.”

Illinois State Police “demand a trial by jury in this matter.”

Last week, Northern District of Illinois Judge Laura K. McNally gave a deadline for a status update to include disclosures, discovery and possible settlement by Oct. 28.