The Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge against an Illinois law that bans citizens from carrying concealed loaded guns on public transit.
The state has prohibited firearms on buses and trains for over a decade, the Chicago Sun-Times noted.
“Three Illinois residents challenged the ban, arguing it violates the Second and 14th Amendment rights,” The Center Square reports.
“There is no historical tradition of banning law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms in crowded public locations where they may be more vulnerable,” lawyers wrote in a petition to the court, according to the outlet.
SCOTUS Turns Away Challenge to Carry Ban on Public Transportationhttps://t.co/lckBjkUd4C
— Bearing Arms (@BearingArmsCom) April 6, 2026
The Center Square shared further:
Illinois requires gun owners to acquire a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card and a concealed carry license in order to carry a firearm in public. However, the state bans individuals from carrying a loaded or unsecured firearm onto buses, trains or any other type of public transportation that is paid for in part or whole by public funds.
Kwame Raoul, Illinois’ attorney general, argued the prohibition on guns in public transportation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition limiting firearms in sensitive places, like court rooms, schools and polling places.
“Like historical sensitive places, public transit features ‘confined areas with a high density of people,’ making firearms ‘exceptionally dangerous,’” Raoul wrote.
“Everyone deserves to feel safe on public transit,” Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said in a statement, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Minimizing the risk from dangerous weapons is crucial to protect members of the public who use this vital public resource. We are pleased the Supreme Court agreed with our arguments, which will allow Illinois’ commonsense law banning firearms on public transportation to stand,” she continued.
Raoul, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, and DuPage County state’s attorney had challenged a lower court ruling that overturned the ban.
“A federal appeals court backed the law in a September decision,” the outlet wrote.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, alongside Illinois attorney general Kwame Raoul and DuPage County state’s attorney, had challenged a lower court ruling overturning it in 2022. A federal appeals court backed the law in a September decision. https://t.co/c7vUJ5mkLZ
— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) April 7, 2026
More from the Chicago Sun-Times:
David G. Sigale, who represented the plaintiffs, said they were “very disappointed” in the decision.
“Law-abiding public transportation riders in Illinois are less safe as a result of the law,” he said in a statement. “We know that groups like the (Illinois State Rifle Association) will continue to fight this prohibition in the legislative and political arenas, as well as the courts, so that Illinoisans’ Second Amendment rights will be respected.”
Four concealed carry permit holders sued over the Illinois law in 2022, claiming it prevented them from carrying weapons for self-defense when traveling on the Chicago Transit Authority and Metra.
In August 2024, a federal judge in Rockford’s U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled in favor of the four plaintiffs who argued that prohibiting guns on public buses and trains was unconstitutional.
That decision relied on a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Bruen that said 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.
Then, last September, Judge Joshua Kolar of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit wrote in the majority opinion for a three-judge panel that the law “is comfortably situated in a centuries-old practice of limiting firearms in sensitive and crowded, confined places.”
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, the law nixed gun possession in places such as public arenas and hospitals.
