Supreme Court denies appeal of local assault rifle ban

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to review a challenge to local gun restrictions in a Chicago suburb, leaving in place a ban on assault weapons in Highland Park, Ill.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented, saying the city’s ban on assault rifles such as the AR-15 and high-capacity magazines violated the Constitution’s Second Amendment.

“The overwhelming majority of citizens who own and use such rifles do so for lawful purposes, including self-defense and target shooting,” Thomas wrote in the dissenting opinion. “Under our precedents, that is all that is needed for citizens to have a right under the Second Amendment to keep such weapons.”

The city of Highland Park passed the gun-control ordinance in 2013, and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban. The appeals court cited a 2008 Supreme Court decision that preserved gun-ownership rights under the Second Amendment but said the Constitution did not apply to “those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes,” such as sawed-off shotguns. The 7th Circuit put assault rifles in that category and said it was OK for the local government to restrict them.

Thomas scolded the 7th Circuit, saying its decision eviscerated individual gun ownership rights as defined by the Constitution and the Supreme Court, which a local municipality does not have the authority to overrule.

The justices’ private deliberations in the case, Friedman v. City of Highland Park, began before the recent terrorist mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. Though the court upheld gun rights in 2008, it has avoided hearing cases about state and local gun-control measures since then. Eight states and several cities, including Washington, D.C., ban or limit possession of assault weapons.

The court does not publish explanations when it decides to deny an appeal, so it’s unclear why seven of the nine justices thought the Highland Park ban on assault weapons should stand.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.