Illinois Supreme Court ducks Open Carry Question, for now.

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, Appellee, v. TYSHON THOMPSON, Appellant Docket No. 129965 Opinion filed June 26, 2025.

An intermediate appellate court had accepted the framing of the defendant’s conviction for possessing a handgun concealed in his motor vehicle as “Open Carry.”

The Illinois Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s argument that it was an Open Carry case, saying:

“As a threshold matter, we note that defendant, by mischaracterizing his firearm possession as open carriage, is attempting to challenge the constitutionality of a statute unrelated to his conviction. The State is correct that concealed carriage, not open carriage, is at issue because the AUUW provisions under which defendant was convicted do not implicate Illinois’s ban on open carriage.”

I had written about the worrisome parallel this case had with The State of Florida v. Dale Lee Norman case, where the Florida Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on Open Carry in a case involving an inadvertent, partial exposure of a concealed handgun. Link. When oral argument took place in January of this year, I wrote this article, which includes the video of the Illinois Supreme Court oral argument.

The defendant reasserted in oral argument that his was an Open Carry challenge. The State of Illinois argued that it was not an Open Carry case, but if it is, the Illinois ban on Open Carry does not violate the Second Amendment.

Fortunately, the Illinois Supreme Court had more sense than the narrow majority of the Florida Supreme Court in 2017. Unfortunately, the Illinois Supreme Court held that it was unnecessary to do the historical analysis required by the United States Supreme Court in NYSRPA v. Bruen (2022).

According to the majority, the government can skip the historical analysis because of footnote 9 in the Bruen decision. Ironically, the Court cited a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion regarding US Supreme Court footnotes but failed to cite the holding of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that footnote 9 of NYSRPA v. Bruen is opaque, murky dicta.

Illinois Supreme Court Justice Overstreet, one of only two Republicans on the Court, wrote an excellent, lengthy dissent. I invite you to read it here.

Meanwhile, the Sinnissippi Rod & Gun Club, Inc., request for leave to file an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court is still pending. On March 1, 2024, a sharply divided, three-judge panel of the Illinois Court of Appeals upheld the state’s ban on the Open Carry of handguns. You can read the decision at this link.

There is no way of knowing when, or if, the Illinois Supreme Court will grant leave to file an appeal. If it does grant leave, the appeal must still be briefed, argued, submitted for a decision, and a decision issued, which means Illinois’ Open Carry ban isn’t going away anytime soon.

Any of the so-called gun-rights groups could file a lawsuit challenging the Illinois Open Carry bans in Federal court, but they won’t.