Benjamin Schoenthal v. Kwame Raoul

In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
____________________
Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
BENJAMIN S CHOENTHAL, et al.,
Plaintiffs-Appellees,
v.
K WAME R AOUL, et al.,
Defendants-Appellants.
____________________
Appeals from the United States District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois, Western Division.
No. 3:22-cv-50326 — Iain D. Johnston, Judge.
____________________
A RGUED M AY 28, 2025 — DECIDED S EPTEMBER 2, 2025
____________________
Before R IPPLE, S T. EVE, and K OLAR , Circuit Judges.
K OLAR , Circuit Judge. Illinois’s Firearm Concealed Carry
Act forbids licensees from carrying firearms on public trans-
portation, with an exception for unloaded and stored fire-
arms. See 430 ILCS 66/65(a)(8). A violation is a misdemeanor
punishable with up to six months incarceration for a first of-
fense. The Plaintiffs argue that this restriction contravenes the
Second Amendment. The district court agreed.

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2 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
To assess the Plaintiffs’ claim, we apply the test set forth
in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1
(2022) and focus on whether 430 ILCS 66/65(a)(8) fits within
our nation’s “history and tradition” of firearm regulation. We
conclude that the challenged law is comfortably situated in a
centuries-old practice of limiting firearms in sensitive and
crowded, confined places.
The Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to
self-defense. It does not bar the people’s representatives from
enacting laws—consistent with our nation’s historical tradi-
tion of regulation—that ensure public transportation systems
remain free from accessible firearms. We are asked whether
the state may temporarily disarm its citizens as they travel in
crowded and confined metal tubes unlike anything the
Founders envisioned. We draw from the lessons of our na-
tion’s historical regulatory traditions and find no Second
Amendment violation in such a regulation. We reverse.
I. Background
A. Illinois Law
The Firearm Concealed Carry Act allows Illinois residents
to obtain licenses to carry concealed firearms in public.1 430
1 Illinois law defines the “unlawful possession of weapons” as a crim-
inal offense. See 720 ILCS 5/24-1; see also 720 ILCS 5/24-1.6 (the aggravated
version of the offense). The Act was passed in 2013, after we determined
that previous versions of 720 ILCS 5/24-1 & 5/24-1.6 that prohibited fire-
arm possession in public violated the Second Amendment. See Moore v.
Madigan, 702 F.3d 933 (7th Cir. 2012). Although the details are not perti-
nent to the issues on appeal, the Act more precisely allows carry of hand-
guns, defined as “any device which is designed to expel a projectile or
projectiles by the action of an explosion, expansion of gas, or escape of gas
that is designed to be held and fired by the use of a single hand.” 430 ILCS

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 3
ILCS 66/1, et seq. It also enumerates locations where even li-
censees may not carry loaded and accessible firearms. 430
ILCS 66/65.
This case is about only one of those locations, public
transit. The Act provides that a licensee shall not knowingly
carry a firearm on or into
[a]ny bus, train, or form of transportation paid
for in whole or in part with public funds, and
any building, real property, and parking area
under the control of a public transportation fa-
cility paid for in whole or in part with public
funds.
430 ILCS 66/65(a)(8). For convenience, we sometimes call this
the “public transit firearm restriction,” or Section 65(a)(8). Ex-
ceptions apply when a person carries a firearm that is broken
down, properly stored, or not immediately accessible. 720
ILCS 5/24-1(a)(4)(i)–(iii).
A first violation of Section 65(a)(8) is a Class B misde-
meanor punishable by up to 6 months incarceration and up to
a $1,500 fine.2 430 ILCS 66/70(e) (“Except as otherwise pro-
vided, a licensee in violation of this Act shall be guilty of a
Class B misdemeanor.”); 730 ILCS 5/5-4.5-60.
Section 65(a)(8) regulates conduct on numerous public
transit systems. The largest is the Chicago Transit Authority
66/5. It excludes machine guns, short-barreled rifles, and shotguns, and
refers to the definitions of those terms found in 430 ILCS 5/24-1. Id.
2 A subsequent violation is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up
to 364 days incarceration and up to a $2,500 fine. 430 ILCS 66/70(e); 730
ILCS 5/5-4.5-55.

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4 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
(CTA), which runs trains and buses in the city of Chicago and
into surrounding communities. Hundreds of millions of CTA
trips occur each year. The second largest is Metra, a commuter
rail system again centered in Chicago. Additional forms of
public transit include several more busing systems and two
rail systems stretching into neighboring states, the South
Shore Line (Indiana) and MetroLink (Missouri).
B. Procedural History
The Plaintiffs are three Illinois residents who claim that
Section 65(a)(8) violates their Second Amendment rights (as
enforceable against Illinois by the Fourteenth Amendment).3
Benjamin Schoenthal, Mark Wroblewski, and Douglas Win-
ston are concealed carry licensees who want to carry firearms
for self-defense while using public transit systems, namely
the CTA and Metra. Plaintiffs often refrain from transit trips
they want to take because Section 65(a)(8) requires temporary
disarmament.
Plaintiffs brought their complaint against several state of-
ficials who they alleged are empowered to enforce Section
65(a)(8) against them: Illinois Attorney General Kwame Ra-
oul, the Cook County State’s Attorney (then Kimberly M.
Foxx, now Eileen O’Neill Burke), and DuPage County State’s
Attorney Robert Berlin, plus two others who are no longer
3 For most of this case, there has been a fourth plaintiff, Joseph Vesel.
Shortly after oral argument, Vesel notified us that he became an officer
with the University of Chicago Police Department. Under Illinois law, that
position affords Vesel the right to carry a concealed firearm for personal
protection when off-duty, including on public transportation. 110 ILCS
1020/1; 720 ILCS 5/24-2(a)(1); id. at 5/2-13. Thus, Vesel has accurately sub-
mitted that his claim regarding Section 65(a)(8) is moot. We dismiss him
from this appeal.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 5
subject to this proceeding, the DeKalb County and Lake
County State’s Attorneys.4 They requested a declaration “that
the Public Transportation Carry Ban consisting of 430 ILCS
66/65(a)(8), and all related laws, regulations, policies, and pro-
cedures” were unconstitutional.
The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment.
The district court’s decision first addressed jurisdiction and
rejected the argument that Plaintiffs lacked standing. It found
an injury because “[t]he undisputed facts show that each
plaintiff would carry a concealed handgun on public trans-
portation for the purpose of self-defense if not for the Firearm
Concealed Carry Act’s ban and its threat of arrest and prose-
cution.” Therefore, the district court concluded that “Plain-
tiffs’ injuries trace back to the threat of enforcement” and “a
declaration would redress that injury.”
On the merits, after applying Bruen, the district court
granted Plaintiffs’ motion and declared that enforcing Section
65(a)(8) against Plaintiffs would violate the Second Amend-
ment. It held that carrying firearms on public transit fell
within the textual ambit of the Second Amendment, and that
the government had failed to meet its burden to establish that
Section 65(a)(8) was within the country’s historical tradition
of firearm regulation.
The Defendants appealed in two sets: Attorney General
Raoul joined by the DuPage County State’s Attorney, and the
Cook County State’s Attorney on her own. When the distinc-
tion matters, usually because an argument was made by only
one, we refer to them separately as the State and Cook
4 The district court dismissed these two defendants because Plaintiffs
had not shown intent to ride public transit in DeKalb or Lake County.

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6 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
County. When it does not, we speak of “Defendants” or
simply “the government.”
II. Analysis
We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment
and the underlying question of constitutional law de novo. An-
derson v. Milwaukee County, 433 F.3d 975, 978 (7th Cir. 2006).
Summary judgment is appropriate if “there is no genuine dis-
pute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judg-
ment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
Before we reach the merits, we must confirm that Plaintiffs
have standing to bring their claims. Word Seed Church v. Vill.
of Hazel Crest, 111 F.4th 814, 819, 822 (7th Cir. 2024).
A. Plaintiffs Have Standing
Article III of the Constitution affords federal courts with
jurisdiction over “Cases” and “Controversies.” Murthy v. Mis-
souri, 603 U.S. 43, 56 (2024). “A proper case or controversy ex-
ists only when at least one plaintiff ‘establishes that she has
standing to sue.’” Id. at 57 (quoting Raines v. Byrd, 521 U.S.
811, 818 (1997)).
To establish standing, Plaintiffs must “present an injury
that is [1] concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; [2]
fairly traceable to the defendant’s challenged behavior; and
[3] likely to be redressed by a favorable ruling.” Dep’t of Com-
merce v. New York, 588 U.S. 752, 766 (2019) (quoting Davis v.
Federal Election Comm’n, 554 U.S. 724, 733 (2008)). As the dis-
trict court found, each of the Plaintiffs would take a concealed
firearm on public transportation if not for the credible threat
of prosecution by Defendants under Section 65(a)(8), so injury
and traceability are certain. And a judgment that the statute
violates the Second Amendment would provide redress.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 7
Cook County offers two reasons why we should neverthe-
less conclude that the Plaintiffs lack standing. The first de-
serves no more than a brief rejection. For context, Plaintiffs
originally sought injunctive relief, in addition to a declaratory
judgment, but the district court’s summary judgment deci-
sion held that they forfeited the request for an injunction.5 Ac-
cording to Cook County, the forfeiture means the district
court lost jurisdiction to enter a declaratory judgment. That is
incorrect.
Nearly a century of case law establishes that Plaintiffs can
bring a standalone claim pursuant to the procedures in the
Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. §2201(a), when the claim
satisfies Article III’s case-or-controversy requirement. Nash-
ville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. Co. v. Wallace, 288 U.S. 249,
262–63 (1933); Skelly Oil Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 339 U.S.
667, 671–72 (1950) (“The Declaratory Judgment Act allowed
relief to be given by way of recognizing the plaintiff’s right
even though no immediate enforcement of it was asked.”);
MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118, 126 (2007)
(“There was a time when this Court harbored doubts about
the compatibility of declaratory-judgment actions with Arti-
cle III’s case-or-controversy requirement. … We dispelled
those doubts….”). Cook County misreads California v. Texas,
which again explains the uncontroversial proposition that a
plaintiff who seeks a declaratory judgment must show stand-
ing like any other plaintiff, including that the asserted injury
can be relieved by court action such as an injunction. 593 U.S.
659, 672 (2021). Contrary to Cook County’s position, a
5 Plaintiffs did not cross-appeal this ruling.

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8 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
plaintiff need not actually pursue that relief.6 See Aetna Life
Ins. Co. of Hartford, Conn. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227, 241 (1937)
(“And as it is not essential to the exercise of the judicial power
[to enter a declaratory judgment] that an injunction be sought,
allegations that irreparable injury is threatened are not re-
quired.”); see also Hero v. Lake County Election Board, 42 F.4th
768, 772 (7th Cir. 2022).
That brings us to Cook County’s second reason why Plain-
tiffs lack standing: other rules restrict Plaintiffs from carrying
firearms on public transportation even in the absence of the
challenged statute, so a favorable decision does not redress
Plaintiffs’ injuries because they still could not carry firearms
on public transit. This argument requires us to carefully parse
the Supreme Court’s standing jurisprudence, along with our
own case law, but Plaintiffs’ injuries are indeed redressable.
Currently, Metra bans firearms with no exception for con-
cealed carry licensees. Passenger Code of Conduct, Metra,
§§III(I), IV(H).7 Plaintiffs assert that they will defy Metra’s
6 In California v. Texas, the plaintiffs requested a declaratory judgment
that an “unenforceable statutory provision”—the Affordable Care Act’s
zeroed-out monetary penalty for individuals without health insurance—
was unconstitutional. 593 U.S. at 673. Because the plaintiffs had no dam-
ages from the penalty and could not obtain an injunction to prevent any
official from enforcing the penalty of zero dollars, the Supreme Court held
that plaintiffs sought an advisory opinion that could not have provided
relief from the purported injury. Id.
7 Cook County also says that CTA has a similar ban, but we put that
issue to the side because all three Plaintiffs desire to ride Metra while
armed, but only one has the same wish for CTA. With respect to CTA, the
premise of Cook County’s argument may well be wrong. CTA Ord. No.
016-110 §1(28) (2016) bans firearms but exempts individuals “authorized
under Section 5/24-2 of the Illinois Criminal Code to carry weapons onto

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 9
rule if Section 65(a)(8) is declared unconstitutional. Cook
County retorts that if Plaintiffs knowingly ride Metra in vio-
lation of the firearm ban, they face prosecution for trespass,
which is also a Class B misdemeanor. See 720 ILCS 5/21-3
(providing that a person commits criminal trespass when he
enters upon land after receiving notice that the entry is for-
bidden).
Cook County cites Harp Advertising Illinois, Inc. v. Village of
Chicago Ridge to argue that Metra rules and the possibility of
trespass charges eliminate Plaintiffs’ standing. 9 F.3d 1290
(7th Cir. 1993). There, we held that a plaintiff who challenged
one village ordinance lacked standing because the desired
conduct was prohibited by another unchallenged and unre-
lated zoning rule, hence a favorable ruling would not redress
the injury. Id. at 1292.
transit….” A look at Section 5/24-2 of the Illinois Criminal Code reveals
that it does not “authorize” any individual to carry weapons on transit, at
least not in plain terms. Instead, it lists “exceptions” from Section 24-1,
which defines the offense of “unlawful possession of weapons” in a man-
ner that includes carrying firearms on transit. See 720 ILCS 5/24-1, 24-2. It
appears that the best reading of the CTA ordinance’s text is that because
one of the exceptions in Section 5/24-2 applies to individuals with a con-
cealed carry license, see 720 ILCS 5/24-2(a-5), Plaintiffs are “authorized” to
“carry weapons onto transit” and the ordinance does not apply to them.
Therefore, Section 65(a)(8) would be the only restriction on CTA riders
who have a concealed carry license, and Plaintiff Douglas Winston would
have standing regardless of anything else we say. We called for supple-
mental briefing on this issue, but given the complex interplay between the
CTA ordinance and the relevant Illinois statutes, and that all three Plain-
tiffs have standing either way, we refrain from reaching a definitive con-
clusion. Federalism concerns counsel us to leave novel and complex inter-
pretations of Illinois law to Illinois’s courts, unless we must confront such
an issue to render a decision.

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10 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
Cook County also invokes Haaland v. Brackeen, where the
Supreme Court held that the plaintiffs lacked standing be-
cause while a federal court decision might have had powerful
persuasive effect, it would not bind the state courts who im-
plemented the challenged statute. 599 U.S. 255, 292–94 (2023).
“Redressability requires that the court be able to afford re-
lief through the exercise of its power, not through the persuasive
or even awe-inspiring effect of the opinion explaining the ex-
ercise of its power.” Id. at 294 (quoting Franklin v. Massachu-
setts, 505 U.S. 788, 825 (1992) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and
concurring in judgment) (emphasis in original)). “It is a fed-
eral court’s judgment, not its opinion, that remedies an injury;
thus it is the judgment, not the opinion, that demonstrates re-
dressability.” Id. Cook County thus contends that even if a
federal court decision striking down Section 65(a)(8) would
be convincing to future (federal or state) courts considering a
pre-enforcement challenge to Metra’s rules, or to state courts
encountering a trespass prosecution based on the violation of
those rules, it would not suffice to remedy Plaintiffs’ injury.
Here, Plaintiffs’ redressable injury is facing prosecution
under Section 65(a)(8).8 With respect to possible trespass
charges, neither we nor the Supreme Court have ever held
that a plaintiff who brings a pre-enforcement challenge
against one criminal statute must also challenge all criminal
or civil enforcement statutes that potentially bear upon the
same conduct. “[T]he ability ‘to effectuate a partial remedy’
satisfies the redressability requirement.” Uzuegbunam v.
8 To be precise, prosecution under 430 ILCS 66/70(e) for violating Sec-
tion 65(a)(8).

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 11
Preczewski, 592 U.S. 279, 291 (2021) (quoting Church of Scientol-
ogy of Cal. v. United States, 506 U.S. 9, 13 (1992)).
In Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press v. Rokita, we
affirmed the grant of a preliminary injunction in a pre-en-
forcement challenge to Indiana’s buffer law, which made it a
crime to approach within 25 feet of a law enforcement officer
executing his duties. No. 24-2927, 2025 WL 2218472, at *1 (7th
Cir. Aug. 5, 2025). There, we rejected a similar argument that
the plaintiffs lacked a redressable injury where the challenged
buffer law and a separate, unchallenged emergency incident
statute each criminalized similar conduct. Id. at *4–5. First, we
explained that “although there may be some overlap between
the buffer law and the emergency incident statute, the overlap
is not complete”—the buffer law “applie[d] in a far broader
set of situations….” Id. at *4. Second, we observed that even
had there been complete overlap, because both statutes were
criminal laws, facing prosecution under both for the same
conduct would subject the plaintiffs to steeper penalties. Id.
We held that “removing an additional layer of criminal liabil-
ity [is] a form of redress sufficient to confer standing, even
though the underlying behavior [is] still subject to prosecu-
tion” under other laws. Id. (citing Animal Legal Def. Fund v.
Reynolds, 89 F.4th 1071, 1078 (8th Cir. 2024)).
Contrary to Cook County’s arguments, Harp does not un-
dercut our standing analysis. There, we discussed standing
where the asserted injury was “the inability to erect an off-
premises billboard” and the overlapping restrictions were im-
posed by civil, not criminal laws—a zoning rule challenged
by the plaintiff and a separate, unchallenged local ordinance.
Harp, 9 F.3d at 1292. Either of the zoning rule or the ordinance
operating alone would have precluded the Harp plaintiff’s

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12 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
desired conduct; the layers of criminal liability central to Re-
porters Committee for Freedom of the Press were not present. Id.
Cook County points out that Harp relied on Renne v. Geary,
but that case is even further afield from the facts here. 501 U.S.
312 (1991). In Renne, the plaintiffs challenged a restriction on
certain speech from political candidates, alleging injury be-
cause “they desired to hear” that speech. Id. at 319. The Su-
preme Court had “reason to doubt” that this injury could be
redressed by a favorable decision because a different, unchal-
lenged law might still prohibit the speech that the plaintiffs
wanted to hear. Id. Quite unlike this case, the asserted injury
was a step removed from the restriction, which had no direct
effect on the plaintiffs. See Linda R.S. v. Richard D., 410 U.S.
614, 619 (1973) (“[A] citizen lacks standing to contest the pol-
icies of the prosecuting authority when he himself is neither
prosecuted nor threatened with prosecution.”). Also relevant
for our purposes is that the challenged rule “carrie[d] no crim-
inal penalties, and [could] only be enforced by injunction.”
Renne, 501 U.S. at 322.
We decline to extend Harp to defeat Plaintiffs’ standing
here and instead follow Reporters Committee for Freedom of the
Press. Plaintiffs’ criminal exposure from Section 65(a)(8) is a
discrete injury that a court can remedy. “Plaintiffs [who] face
a credible threat of prosecution ... should not be required to
await and undergo a criminal prosecution as the sole means
of seeking relief.” Holder v. Humanitarian L. Project, 561 U.S. 1,
15 (2010) (quoting Babbitt v. Farm Workers, 442 U.S. 289, 298
(1979)). A categorical rule that plaintiffs must always chal-
lenge all restrictions that might apply to their desired conduct
could allow the government to evade review of squarely pre-
sented controversies, especially in the realm of pre-enforce-
ment challenges to criminal penalties. At the same time, we

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 13
recognize that overlapping criminal statutes could defeat
standing in other contexts, and note the need for careful con-
sideration when these concerns arise.
As stated by Brackeen, 599 U.S. at 292–94, the possible im-
pact of a favorable opinion could not give Plaintiffs’ standing
if they had not presented Section 65(a)(8) charges as an injury
that a favorable judgment is likely to redress.9 It merely helps
define the injury. In viewing the injury as prosecution under
Section 65(a)(8), we find it relevant that there are several lay-
ers of conjecture needed to conclude that Plaintiffs would
continue to face trespass charges after a favorable decision.
Without Section 65(a)(8), no portion of the Illinois Criminal
Code prohibits Plaintiffs from carrying concealed firearms on
transit.10
We also observe that Metra has authority to confiscate fare
media and suspend riding privileges but cannot otherwise
penalize Plaintiffs. Passenger Code of Conduct, Metra, §V.
Plaintiffs’ apparent cost-benefit analysis—that they would
9 As the concurrence discusses, we must also consider issue preclu-
sion. However, we decline to ground our jurisdiction upon a broader anal-
ysis of the preclusive effect our judgement would have on future state or
federal lawsuits. Brackeen involved a lawsuit against federal officials,
when state officials enforced the law at issue. 599 U.S. at 293 (explaining
the state officials would “not be bound by the judgment”). Here, a judg-
ment favorable to Plaintiffs would bar the named Defendants from enforc-
ing Section 65(a)(8) and related laws and regulations (as we discuss next).
10 CTA’s amicus brief argues that 430 ILCS 66/65(a)(5), which bars fire-
arms in “[a]ny building or portion of a building under the control of a unit
of local government,” is an independent bar to redressability. Although
Plaintiffs have not specifically cited this portion of the statute in pressing
their claims, it is identical to Section 65(a)(8) with respect to the proposed
conduct, and we consider the two provisions together.

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14 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
risk sanction under these rules but not charges under Section
65(a)(8)—is conceivably rational. The prospect of these con-
siderably lower penalties does not defeat redressability.11
There is a second basis for our conclusion that Plaintiffs
have standing.12 In a decision issued at the end of the last
term, the Supreme Court emphasized that we assess redress-
ability based on the plaintiff’s complaint, not “the relief the
District Court granted on the merits.” Gutierrez v. Saenz, 145
S. Ct. 2258, 2267 (2025). There, the Supreme Court said that
11 Metra operates on privately owned railroad lines, including the
BNSF Railway, the Canadian National Railway, and the Union Pacific
Railroad. See, e.g., Union Pac. R. Co. v. Reg’l Transp. Auth., 74 F.4th 884, 885
(7th Cir. 2023) (describing the relationship between Metra and Union Pa-
cific). Cook County asserts that these entities all prohibit firearms on their
property, and that this restriction is another independent rule barring re-
dress for Plaintiffs. We are not moved. Cook County backs this claim with
rules pertaining to railway employees and contractors, leaving unclear if
the railways apply them to passengers. And assuming the rules do govern
Metra passengers, we reject Cook County’s argument for the same reasons
as for Metra’s Code of Conduct.
12 Plaintiffs, who have the burden to establish standing, only raised
this argument after we requested supplemental briefing. Yet we have an
“independent obligation” to assess standing. Summers v. Earth Island Inst.,
555 U.S. 488, 499 (2009). While “‘[a] court’s non-waivable obligation to in-
quire into its own jurisdiction is most frequently exercised in the negative,’
courts ‘have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is
given, than to usurp that which is not....’” In re Financial Oversight and Man-
agement Board for Puerto Rico, 110 F.4th 295, 314 (1st Cir. 2024) (quoting
Hartig Drug Co. v. Senju Pharm. Co., 836 F.3d 261, 267 (3rd Cir. 2016)). It is
therefore “appropriate to consider arguments favoring standing not pre-
sented” by the Plaintiffs in their appellate brief, id., particularly when
Plaintiffs mounted other vigorous arguments for standing, introduced
supporting evidence in the summary judgment record, and an interceding
Supreme Court decision affected the analysis.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 15
“[t]o the extent the Fifth Circuit based its assessment of re-
dressability on the declaratory judgment the District Court
later issued, rather than Gutierrez’s complaint, it turned the
Article III standing inquiry on its head.” Id.
Here, the complaint’s prayer for relief requested a judg-
ment declaring that the “Public Transportation Carry Ban
consisting of 430 ILCS 66/65(a)(8), and all related laws, regula-
tions, policies, and procedures” violates the Second Amendment
(emphasis added). Metra’s rules are not formally connected
to Section 65(a)(8), but a trespass prosecution for violating
those rules is properly characterized as a “related” regulation
on carrying firearms. Based on the prayer for relief and the
nature of the Plaintiffs’ claim, the litigation could have devel-
oped such that the district court declared that Plaintiffs had a
right to travel on public transit while armed, and that any ef-
fort to impede that right with criminal charges is unconstitu-
tional. The district court’s order was more circumspect, refer-
encing only Section 65(a)(8). But even if we agreed with Cook
County and found that the district court’s decision did not ac-
tually redress Plaintiffs’ injury, the fact that the district court
could have redressed the injury is sufficient to confer standing
in the first place. Gutierrez, 145 S. Ct. at 2267.
With our jurisdiction assured, we turn to the merits.
B. Illinois’s Public Transit Firearm Restriction Is
Consistent With The Second Amendment
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security
of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.” U.S. C ONST. amend. II. Seventeen
years ago, the Supreme Court interpreted this language in rec-
ognizing an individual right to possess and carry weapons.

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16 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). Not long af-
ter, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment incorpo-
rated that Second Amendment right against the states.
McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). These deci-
sions “opened up new frontiers of litigation” and gave rise to
uncertainty about the appropriate framework for deciding
whether a firearm regulation was constitutionally permissi-
ble. Bevis v. City of Naperville, 85 F.4th 1175, 1188–92 (7th Cir.
2023) (tracing the development of Second Amendment juris-
prudence after Heller).
The Supreme Court has now instructed us to assess Sec-
ond Amendment claims by using the two-step test laid out in
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24, with the benefit of the additional direc-
tion in United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024). Under the
Bruen framework, we first consider whether “the Second
Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct....”
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24. At this first step, we corroborate our
reading of the Second Amendment’s plain text with assistance
from historical sources. See id. at 20 (explaining that in Heller,
the Court assessed whether its initial textual interpretation
was “confirmed by the historical background of the Second
Amendment” (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 592)). If the plain
text covers an individual’s conduct, “the Constitution pre-
sumptively protects that conduct.” Id. And we then move to
Bruen’s second step, where the government has the burden to
“justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent
with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Id.
Everyone agrees that the plain text of the Second Amend-
ment, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, covers Plaintiffs’
desire to ride public transit while carrying a licensed

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 17
concealed firearm for self-defense. See id. at 29 (quoting
McDonald, 561 U.S. at 767) (“[I]ndividual self-defense is ‘the
central component’ of the Second Amendment right.”). There is
no need to linger on the first step.
At the second step, “the appropriate analysis involves con-
sidering whether the challenged regulation is consistent with
the principles that underpin our regulatory tradi-
tion.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. To determine whether a modern
regulation is “‘relevantly similar’ to laws that our tradition is
understood to permit,” id. (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29), the
central inquiry is “how and why the regulation[] burden[s] a
law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense,” Bruen, 597
U.S. at 29. For how, we ask “whether modern and historical
regulations impose a comparable burden on the right of
armed self-defense....” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29. Then, for why,
“whether that burden is comparably justified....” Id. A law
that “regulates arms-bearing for a permissible reason” may
still fall to a Second Amendment challenge if the burden ex-
ceeds that found in our tradition. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. But
when the government has presented “historical laws ‘ad-
dress[ing] particular problems’ there is a good chance ‘con-
temporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar rea-
sons’ are also permissible.” United States v. Rush, 130 F.4th 633,
641 (7th Cir. 2025) (quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692).
In the words of the Supreme Court, “recent Second
Amendment cases ... were not meant to suggest a law trapped
in amber.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 691. “Even if the modern-day
regulation is not ‘a dead ringer for historical precursors, it still
may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster’—we
need not find a historical ‘twin.’” Rush, 130 F.4th at 641 (quot-
ing Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30). After all, “[t]he regulatory

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18 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
challenges posed by firearms today are not always the same
as those that preoccupied the Founders in 1791 or the Recon-
struction generation in 1868.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27. The Bruen
inquiry accordingly recognizes that “cases implicating un-
precedented societal concerns or dramatic technological
changes may require a more nuanced approach” to drawing
historical analogies. Id.
With that foundation, we confront Illinois’s public transit
firearm restriction. Undoubtedly, some place-based re-
strictions on carrying firearms are harmonious with the Sec-
ond Amendment. The Supreme Court has provided a non-ex-
haustive list of “sensitive places” to use as material for ana-
logical reasoning, and beyond that, there is a more expansive
tradition of regulations pertaining to confined and crowded
places. Id. at 30. Although public transportation is a histori-
cally recent phenomenon, the regulation at issue is “rele-
vantly similar” to rules throughout our nation’s history. Id. at
29. We conclude that the government has met its burden un-
der step two.
1. Regulation of Firearms in Sensitive Places is Permissible
The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that “laws
forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as
schools and government buildings” are consistent with the
Second Amendment. Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27; McDonald, 561
U.S. at 786. Sensitive places “where weapons were altogether
prohibited” in the 18th and 19th centuries also include “legis-
lative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses....” Bruen,
597 U.S. at 30. At the time, there was no dispute that these
rules were legal. Id. Thus, “courts can use analogies to those
historical regulations of ‘sensitive places’ to determine that
modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 19
and analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissi-
ble.” Id.
The Second and Ninth Circuits recently applied the sensi-
tive places doctrine. The Second Circuit largely rejected a Sec-
ond Amendment challenge to a New York state law that crim-
inalized carrying firearms in many places, including parks,
bars, places of worship, theaters, zoos, and more. Antonyuk v.
James, 120 F.4th 941, 955–57 (2d Cir. 2024).13 It did not assess
the constitutionality of a public transit restriction.14
The Ninth Circuit reached a more mixed result after re-
viewing California and Hawaii laws that again restricted fire-
arms in parks, bars, places of worship, plus other locations
not covered by New York’s law, like banks and hospitals.
Wolford v. Lopez, 116 F.4th 959, 1002–03 (9th Cir. 2024) (“A
State likely may ban firearms in museums but not churches;
in restaurants but not hospitals; in libraries but not banks.”).
Critically, the Ninth Circuit also assessed California’s pro-
hibition of firearms on public transit. Id. at 1000. Our sister
circuit held that the law was likely unconstitutional but only
because it did not contain an exception for unloaded and
13 The Supreme Court denied certiorari. Antonyuk v. James, 145 S. Ct.
1900 (2025).
14 The district court enjoined New York’s ban on carrying firearms in
buses, vans, and airports (to the extent a person was “complying with all
federal regulations there”). Antonyuk v. Hochul, 639 F. Supp. 3d 232, 331
(N.D.N.Y. 2022). New York did not appeal that part of the decision. See
Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 960. (“The State challenged each aspect of the in-
junction except for the portion concerning the [New York ban’s] applica-
tion to buses and airports.”).

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20 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
secured firearms.15 Id. at 1000–01. Illinois, of course, has that
exception. We will say more about Wolford’s public transit
analysis later.
Right now, we advise that while the issue before us is nar-
rower than those in Antonyuk or Wolford, we find their reason-
ing instructive. After reviewing Bruen and Rahimi with the in-
sight of our sister circuits, we apply the following methodol-
ogy to analyze a place-based firearm restriction. “Our Nation
has a clear historical tradition of banning firearms at sensitive
places.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 980; Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30 (same).
To show that a place-based regulation fits within that tradi-
tion, the government may compare it to the regulations on
schools, legislative assemblies, polling places, and court-
houses blessed in Heller and Bruen. Comparison to regulations
at those four sensitive places benefits from an already-com-
pleted historical analysis. All we must do is make the analogy.
But nothing in Bruen suggests that its short list of sensitive
places was intended to be a conclusive survey of all historical
place-based firearm laws. Such a narrow reading would run
contrary to the two-part test Bruen announced. When a mod-
ern law does not neatly compare to the regulations on the four
prototypical sensitive places, as it often might not, the gov-
ernment should present additional historical evidence of
analogous place-based restrictions to help locate the chal-
lenged law within our tradition. If the government cannot do
so, a modern regulation is unconstitutional.
15 Antonyuk and Wolford were both appeals from a preliminary injunc-
tion rather than a declaratory judgment. This procedural distinction with
our case is immaterial to the legal analysis.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 21
One point deserves emphasis. We are in the project of
comparing regulations, not places. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29–30;
Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. “‘Analogical reasoning’ under Bruen
demands a wider lens: Historical regulations reveal a princi-
ple, not a mold.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 740 (Barrett, J., concur-
ring).
That matters because the sensitive places identified in
Bruen meaningfully differ from one another in their charac-
teristics. We must consider whether there are core principles
unifying those sensitive places that justify firearms regula-
tions within them. Schools and courthouses may share struc-
tural characteristics (or not), and certainly differ in their func-
tions and the ages and activities of their primary inhabitants;
legislative assemblies and polling places are central to repre-
sentative democracy but share few characteristics as physical
spaces.
Plaintiffs attempt to carve out schools from the group and
then assert that the remaining commonality is that the gov-
ernment provides comprehensive security in those places.
This effort does not withstand historical scrutiny. Plaintiffs
assert that firearm restrictions in schools were linked to the
principle of in loco parentis authority over students. But it
would be odd for the Supreme Court to talk about schools in
the context of sensitive places if it was actually referring to
restrictions on students, a subset of those occupying the place.
Because we read Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30, and Heller, 554 U.S. at
626, to say that schools are places where firearms can be pro-
hibited for all individuals, what makes schools “sensitive”
must be something other than in loco parentis. Surely, it is not
government provided security.

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22 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
The security principle also cannot unify even legislative
assemblies, polling places, and courthouses. Nowadays, we
expect to be greeted at legislative assemblies and courthouses
with screenings and armed officials. But the historical evi-
dence marshaled by the parties and amici indicates surpris-
ingly lax and irregular security practices in our nation’s past.
Legislative assemblies, including Congress, were often pro-
tected by merely one person, whose duties and abilities
would be less-than-adequate to stave off violence.16 Court-
houses, relatedly, preoccupied sheriffs with administrative
responsibilities, and would not always require their regular
attendance.17 And the historical evidence of law enforcement
16 See T HE PUBLIC L AWS OF THE S TATE OF SOUTH C AROLINA 426–27
(John Faucheraud Grimke ed., Phila., R. Aitken & Son 1790), Act of Mar.
27, 1787, No. 1482 (South Carolina statute providing for one door-keeper
for each legislative chamber); A COMPILATION OF THE L AWS OF THE S TATE
OF GEORGIA 372–73 (Augustin Smith Clayton ed., Augusta, Adams &
Duyckinck 1812), Act of Dec. 10, 1807, No. 280 (Georgia statute paying one
individual for dual role of “messenger and door-keeper” for each cham-
ber); E XTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE PROVINCIAL
C ONGRESS OF N EW J ERSEY 240 (Burlington, Isaac Collins, reprinted by
Woodbury, Joseph Sailer 1835), Act Effective Mar. 1, 1776 (New Jersey or-
dinance providing for payment to one legislative door-keeper); United
States Capitol Police, Mission & History, https://www.uscp.gov/the-de-
partment/our-mission [https://perma.cc/94HJ-SUFF] (last visited Aug. 11,
2025) (explaining that in 1800 a “lone watchman, John Golding, was hired
to protect the Capitol Building,” and that the watch remained one person
until 1828, when it was expanded to four).
17 Founding-era state laws required the sheriffs’ and constables’ pres-
ence in courthouses at times but also obliged their presence in the broader
community for the service of writs, warrants, and summonses, punishing
crimes, and overseeing the sale of property. That array of functions sup-
ports our conclusion that the Founding-era sheriff’s remit was broader
than that of the modern courthouse security guard. See T HE PUBLIC L AWS

-- 22 of 61 --

Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 23
at polling places persuades us that their role was largely to
help run elections rather than provide security.18 In all three
contexts, law enforcement ensured smooth operations, which
is distinct from the practice of comprehensive security to keep
people safe.
The government, in contrast to Plaintiffs, does not attempt
to devise a common factor between schools, legislative assem-
blies, polling places, and courthouses. In lieu of that effort, the
government’s analogies pick out various characteristics
shared by some of those places. As discussed below, many of
those comparisons are well-made, but we still need to identify
a core principle underlying sensitive place regulations.
That unifying principle emerges when we look at “how”
and “why” the government historically burdened the right to
carry weapons in these four types of sensitive places.
OF THE S TATE OF RHODE -I SLAND 220, 222 (Providence, Carter & Wilkinson
1798), Act of Jan. 29, 1798; L AWS OF THE STATE OF N EW J ERSEY 50 (Joseph
Bloomfield ed., Trenton, James J. Wilson 1811), Act of Mar. 15, 1798; A
DIGEST OF THE L AWS OF THE S TATE OF GEORGIA 473–74 (Robert & George
Watkins eds., Phila., R. Aitken 1800), Act of Dec. 18, 1792; 1 THE L AWS OF
M ARYLAND , ch. 25 (1799).
18 See T HE PUBLIC L AWS OF THE S TATE OF SOUTH C AROLINA 387–88, Act
of Mar. 27, 1787, No. 1395 (including in the “public services of the Sheriff”
the administrative functions of “publishing writs for electing members to
the General Assembly” and “taking the ballots and returning the writ”);
A BRIDGEMENT OF THE PUBLIC PERMANENT L AWS OF V IRGINIA 325 (Augus-
tine Davis ed., 1796), Act of Dec. 11, 1778 (requiring the sheriff to notify
the freeholders of the upcoming election and to “attend and take the poll
at such election, entering the names of the persons voted for in a distinct
column, and the name of every freeholder giving his vote under the name
of the person he votes for,” and to “upon oath, certify[] the name of the
person elected, to be by the clerk recorded.”).

-- 23 of 61 --

24 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. Ironically, the similarity is their
differences; not with each other, but from everywhere else.
They are all discrete places with unavoidable characteristics
that potentially render it ill-advised to allow firearms. Schools
are learning environments overwhelmingly dominated by the
presence of children; legislative assemblies feature public of-
ficials making weighty decisions about how to run our gov-
ernment. Polling places call upon the public to do the same.
So do courthouses oblige judges and juries with the admin-
istration of justice. What happens within these places means
that there is a pre-existing vulnerability or societal tension
that would be exacerbated by the presence of firearms. And
crucially, they are a list of dispersed places within a commu-
nity, not the community itself, so regulation deprives the Sec-
ond Amendment right only for a limited time.
Put another way, firearms are potentially disruptive and
deadly everywhere. The Second Amendment settled whether
society nevertheless accepts the risk of allowing armed self-
defense. Yet the sensitive places doctrine tells us that the ap-
propriate balance allows for temporary restrictions in scat-
tered discrete places where the risk is simply different, and
reminiscent of risks addressed by regulations in our past.
“To be clear,” this is not a “regulatory blank check” to use
security fears to justify any firearm restriction. Bruen, 597 U.S.
at 30. Rather, the search for a “relevantly similar” regulation
burdens the government to make comparisons between the
“particular problems” that motivated historical firearm re-
strictions in certain places and the problems that spur re-
strictions today. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692. Here, logical reason-
ing builds on the foundation of history.

-- 24 of 61 --

Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 25
What is said when making an analogy to historical sensi-
tive place rules might at times sounds like the means-end
scrutiny rejected in Bruen, 597 U.S. at 19. But the fact that sim-
ilar points can be made under different tests is a familiar as-
pect of the law. A prosecutor cannot secure a conviction by
arguing that a defendant is so dangerous that he deserves to
be behind bars. She can do so only by proving the elements of
an offense. That those elements might go heavily to a defend-
ant’s danger does not change the nature of the appropriate
inquiry. The same is true under Bruen. The Founding genera-
tion made policy choices, inhered with value-laden judg-
ments, and so have successive generations. We cannot analo-
gize without reference to those choices.
Still, Bruen assigns judges with the part-time role of histo-
rian, not policymaker. The government certainly should not
try to convince us that a law’s benefits outweigh the costs. It
should show no more, and no less, than that the trade-off is
one that accords with our history.
Some place-based restrictions will look much like those in
the past. (Think of a rule banning firearms at a daycare.) Other
times, they will appear rather different. This may be a consti-
tutional warning sign, especially if the government is restrict-
ing firearms in a place that has existed throughout our na-
tion’s history without analogous prohibitions. See, e.g., Wol-
ford, 116 F.4th at 980–81. It may also reflect the fact, however,
that some places did not exist until more recent periods of his-
tory. “[C]ourts must be particularly attuned to the reality that
the issues we face today are different than those faced in me-
dieval England, the Founding Era, the Antebellum Era, and
Reconstruction.” Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 970. When modern is-
sues are significantly different from problems encountered in

-- 25 of 61 --

26 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
the past, higher-level analogies can support a law’s constitu-
tionality. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27.
All in all, the Supreme Court’s Bruen framework, and the
sensitive place doctrine, lead us to ask: Is Illinois’s law “‘rele-
vantly similar’ to laws that our tradition is understood to per-
mit....”? Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29).
We could likely answer in the affirmative. Nevertheless, our
Constitutional rights stand as a bulwark against government
overreach, and we do not treat Second Amendment rights as
a “second-class right….” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 70. So before con-
cluding that Illinois may temporarily cabin an individual’s
right to carry a firearm while using a crowded transit system,
we continue our analysis.
2. Illinois’s Public Transit Firearm Restriction is Akin to
the Tradition of Regulating Firearms in Crowded and
Confined Spaces
We start by expanding on Bruen’s list of locations where
firearms were historically prohibited. In response to Plain-
tiffs’ challenge, the government fits the public transit re-
striction within the sensitive places doctrine by supplying ev-
idence that a consistent historical thread prohibits firearms in
analogously crowded and confined locations. After that reg-
ulatory practice started in medieval England, it continued in
Revolutionary America, through Reconstruction, and into the
present day. Our sister circuits have described much of this
history. Wolford, 116 F.4th at 986; Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1019–
24. We borrow from their telling.
The beginning of the relevant tradition, based on the rec-
ord the government has provided, is 1328’s Statute of North-
ampton, a “British statute forbidding going or riding ‘armed
by night [ ]or by day, in fairs [or] markets....’” Antonyuk, 120

-- 26 of 61 --

Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 27
F.4th at 1019 (quoting Statute of Northampton 1328, 2 Edw. 3
c.3 (Eng.)). This firearm restriction in traditionally crowded
public spaces persisted into American law, including in Vir-
ginia and North Carolina. 1786 Va. Acts 35, ch. 49; State v.
Huntly, 25 N.C. 418, 420–21 (1843).
Plaintiffs explain, and we accept, that these laws were un-
derstood to only prohibit firearm carrying that caused “ter-
ror.”19 See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 40–45 (discussing the Northamp-
ton statute and successor laws). That weakens the analogy.
Nevertheless, the laws still demonstrate that the American
tradition has long approved of firearm restrictions that are
triggered by carrying in a crowded space, even if another con-
dition is required to complete the violation.20 This is a princi-
ple, rather than a dead ringer. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692.
Another law built on the principle that originated in the
Statute of Northampton by flatly banning carrying firearms
19 The Second Circuit concluded that North Carolina law did not have
a terror element, but Plaintiffs argue that the Second Circuit relied on an
inaccurate historical document. Antonyuk, 116 F.4th at 1019–20. One peril
of relying on history is that records of past laws are incomplete and can be
unreliable. For the purpose of this opinion, we assume that Plaintiffs are
right, but we would not see this as a load-bearing mistake in the Second
Circuit’s analysis.
20 We agree with the Second Circuit that Bruen addressed the Statute
of Northampton as a justification for New York’s categorical restriction on
public carry and that the Supreme Court’s analysis in that regard does not
control whether the Northampton statute is analogous to more limited
place-based restrictions. Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1020 n.82; see also Rahimi,
602 U.S. at 700 (“The conclusion that focused regulations ... are not a his-
torical analogue for a broad prohibitory regime like New York's [in Bruen]
does not mean that they cannot be an appropriate analogue for a narrow
one.”).

-- 27 of 61 --

28 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
in confined and crowded spaces, without any terror require-
ments. An 1817 New Orleans ordinance prohibited firearms
in public ballrooms. See An Ordinance Respecting Public Balls
(1817), in A GENERAL DIGEST OF THE O RDINANCES AND
R ESOLUTIONS OF THE C ORPORATION OF N EW O RLEANS 371
(1831); Wolford, 116 F.4th at 986. We see no sign that the law-
fulness of this rule, which was enacted within the lifetimes of
the generation that fought the Revolutionary War and ratified
the Bill of Rights, was subject to dispute. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30
(advising that a key concern is to avoid upholding laws that
“our ancestors would have never accepted”) (quoting Drum-
mond v. Robinson, 9 F.4th 217, 226 (3d Cir. 2021)).
And, as discussed, sensitive place restrictions were al-
ready well-known. The idea that firearms could be banned in
certain locations, which originated in British legal practices,
provided a relevant principle familiar to the Founding gener-
ation, and helps us understand why restrictions such as the
New Orleans ordinance would be accepted without contro-
versy. These rules were evolving and building on each other
as a young nation put into practice the public understanding
of the right to bear arms.
Before moving on, we pause for another comment on
methodology. Plaintiffs argue that much of the government’s
other evidence is not probative because it is after the Found-
ing era. We are unconvinced. “[T]he government is not con-
strained to only Founding Era laws. While not every time pe-
riod is weighed equally, Bruen instructs us to consider ‘histor-
ical precedent from before, during, and even after the found-
ing....’” Rush, 130 F.4th at 642 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27).
That approach accords with Founding-era methodologies of
constitutional and statutory interpretation. See, e.g., THE

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 29
F EDERALIST N O. 37 (James Madison) (1788) (“All new laws…
are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until
their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of par-
ticular discussions and adjudications.”).
Although the Supreme Court has not set a conclusive cut-
off point, we and other circuits concur that evidence stretch-
ing into the nineteenth century is useful to a Bruen inquiry.
Rush, 130 F.4th at 642 (citing to an 1856 statute); Bevis, 85 F.4th
at 1201–02; Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 973–74; Wolford, 116 F.4th at
980; Nat’l Rifle Ass’n v. Bondi, 133 F.4th 1108, 1121 (11th Cir.
2025) (en banc) (W. Pryor, C.J.) (relying on “[m]id-to-late-
nineteenth-century laws”). That is especially true when re-
viewing a state law, given that the states were not bound by
the Second Amendment until the Fourteenth Amendment
was ratified in 1868. See Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 972–74; Wolford,
116 F.4th at 980.
A trickier issue emerges when Founding-era evidence and
laws from later periods, such as Reconstruction, provide op-
posite signals about the contours of the Second Amendment.
“But we need not and do not decide in this appeal how to ad-
dress a conflict between the Founding-era and Reconstruc-
tion-era understandings of the right....” Nat’l Rifle Ass’n, 133
F.4th at 1116–17. When it comes to crowded space restrictions,
“historical practice from the mid-to-late nineteenth century ...
confirm[s] the Founding-era understanding of the Second
Amendment.” Id. at 1116.
For example, an 1852 New Mexico law prohibited firearms
at any “Ball or Fandango” (as the combined reference

-- 29 of 61 --

30 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
conveys, a fandango is a social gathering like a ball).21 Wolford,
116 F.4th at 986 & n.5; see 1852 N.M. Laws 67, 69, §3. In the
Reconstruction Era, at least four states “passed laws prohibit-
ing weapons in ... crowded places such as assemblies for ‘ed-
ucational, literary or scientific purposes, or ... ball room[s], so-
cial part[ies,] or other social gathering[s].’” Antonyuk, 120
F.4th at 1020 (quoting 1870 Tex. Gen. Laws 63, ch. 46, §1); see
also 1870 Ga. Laws 421, No. 285, §1; 1875 Mo. Laws 50–51, §1;
1869–1870 Tenn. Pub. Acts 23–24, ch. 22, §2; 1871 Tex. Gen.
Laws 25–26, ch. 34, §3 (adding additional restricted areas to
1870 law)); Wolford, 116 F.4th at 986–88 (discussing these
laws).
These crowded-space restrictions were consistently up-
held as constitutional under state constitutional provisions
analogous to the Second Amendment. Andrews v. State, 50
Tenn. 165, 186 (1871); English v. State, 35 Tex. 473, 480 (1871);22
Hill v. State, 53 Ga. 472, 476 (1874); State v. Shelby, 2 S.W. 468,
469–70 (Mo. 1886). That is strong evidence that similar
crowded space rules are constitutional today. See Bruen, 597
U.S. at 68 (describing “judicial scrutiny” as relevant to the
analysis); Wolford, 116 F.4th at 981 (“[I]f courts unanimously
21 New Mexico was still a territory, but while Bruen found several
short-lived territorial restrictions “deserve[d] little weight” in the histori-
cal analysis, 597 U.S. at 69, we side with the Second Circuit that it would
be wrong to read Bruen as compelling “automatic rejection of any territo-
rial laws and statutes….” Antonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1029. Territorial laws can
carry weight when they were “consistent with” contemporaneous state
laws, like this New Mexico law. Id.
22 As with the Statute of Northampton, we agree with the Second Cir-
cuit that the Supreme Court’s discussion of English in Bruen is not decisive
to whether English is an analogue for place-based restrictions. Antonyuk,
120 F.4th at 1021 n.83.

-- 30 of 61 --

Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 31
confirmed laws as constitutional, that evidence ... suggests
that the laws were constitutional....”).
Several more laws show that just as crowded place laws
existed long before Reconstruction, they persisted afterward.
In 1879, New Orleans expanded its firearm prohibition to
cover “any theatre, public hall, tavern, picnic ground, place
for shows or exhibitions, house or other place of public enter-
tainment or amusement.” JEWELL’ S DIGEST OF THE C ITY
O RDINANCES OF THE C ITY OF NEW O RLEANS 1 (Edwin L. Jewell
ed., 1882) art. 1; see Wolford, 116 F.4th at 987. From the 1880s
through the turn of the century, the territories of Arizona,
Montana, and Oklahoma affirmed the aforementioned state
regulatory practices by adopting prohibitions on firearms in
various public gathering spaces, like ballrooms. Antonyuk, 120
F.4th at 1020 (citing 1889 Ariz. Sess. Laws 16, 17, No. 13, §3;
1890 Okla. Terr. Stats. ch. 25, art. 47, §7); Wolford, 116 F.4th at
987 (describing an analogous 1903 Montana law).
On a similar record, the Second Circuit concluded that
“the Nation not only tolerated the regulation of firearms in ...
crowded spaces, but also found it aberrational that a state
would be unable to regulate firearms ... in such spaces.” An-
tonyuk, 120 F.4th at 1020–21. Said differently, a “high popula-
tion density in discrete, confined spaces … has historically justi-
fied firearm restrictions.” Id. at 1027 (emphasis added). The
Ninth Circuit’s analysis of various restrictions rested on a
similar premise. Wolford, 116 F.4th at 986 (“[T]hese laws show
a well-established tradition of prohibiting firearms at
crowded places … [a]nd ... we are not aware of any question
as to the constitutionality of those laws.”).
The federal government, for its part, regulates concealed
carry in transit: an airline passenger faces federal criminal

-- 31 of 61 --

32 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
penalties for carrying a concealed firearm on board. 49 U.S.C.
§46505. Congress first criminalized carrying weapons aboard
aircraft in 1961, as commercial air travel began to play a
greater role in our national life. See Act of Sept 5, 1961, Pub. L.
No. 87-197, §l, 75 Stat 466, 466–67 (1961). We acknowledge
that regulations concerning air transit are a more recent phe-
nomenon. The Founders could not have anticipated the mod-
ern transit system, either as mass transit exists in Illinois or in
air travel. The Supreme Court counseled that “dramatic tech-
nological changes may require a more nuanced approach” to
our analysis of historical regulation. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27. We
note these more recent regulations here only to demonstrate
an unbroken chain of regulations in crowded and confined
spaces. And like the transport exception in the public transit
firearm restriction at issue here, federal law allows a passen-
ger to carry an unloaded firearm “in baggage not accessible
to a passenger in flight if the air carrier was informed of the
presence of the weapon.” 49 U.S.C. §46505(d)(3). Illinois’s ap-
proach with the public transit firearm restriction accords with
Congress’s choices in a similar context, supporting its lawful-
ness.
We agree with our sister circuits and hold that regulations
in crowded and confined places are ensconced in our nation’s
history and tradition. As we see it, crowded spaces re-
strictions fall under the sensitive place doctrine. To clarify our
terminology, any location where firearms can be banned is ac-
curately described as a “sensitive place” for the sake of a Sec-
ond Amendment inquiry. Bruen explicitly disclaims that it
was listing all possible historical sensitive places. 597 U.S. at
30–31. The government’s crowded spaces evidence helps us
figure out if the label is appropriate by creating more ana-
logues and further defining the characteristics and problems

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 33
that justify place-based firearm restrictions. As always, the
converse is true too, and it is not enough to say that a rule
addressing a crowded space is permissible merely because
crowded spaces were historically subject to firearm regula-
tions. See id. There must be a clear connection between the na-
ture of the crowded space and the resulting problem of allow-
ing firearms, which is best proved by analogue regulations
that address comparable problems in similar spaces.
3. The How and Why of Historical Regulations are Akin to
Those of the Illinois Public Transit Restriction
Against this backdrop of additional historical evidence,
we turn to analogies. Analogizing between a legislative as-
sembly and a CTA bus is no easy task. We could say both can
suffer gridlock, yet that is clearly not relevant to our analysis.
However, we are analogizing restrictions, not merely places.
And because the high-level principle supporting historical
sensitive place-regulations—temporary restrictions on arms-
bearing in limited places with unique features—is familiar by
now, we take the opportunity to be more specific.
Mindful of our marching orders from the Supreme Court,
we start with the “how.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29. Section 65(a)(8)
impairs the right to carry a firearm only when an individual
is within a particular space. Many of the restrictions scruti-
nized in the post-Heller era are categorical deprivations of the
right to self-defense, such as the licensing regime struck down
in Bruen, or the ongoing challenges to 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1)’s
prohibition of the possession of firearms by a convicted felon.
See, e.g., United States v. Gay, 98 F.4th 843, 846–47 (7th Cir.
2024); Range v. Att’y Gen. United States, 124 F.4th 218, 222 (3d
Cir. 2024) (en banc); United States v. Duarte, 137 F.4th 743, 747

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34 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
(9th Cir. 2025) (en banc); Zherka v. Bondi, 140 F.4th 68, 75 (2d
Cir. 2025).
It is entirely possible to avoid Section 65(a)(8), as Plaintiffs
currently do. And, when an individual decides the benefit of
using public transit outweighs the burden on his right to
carry, the trade-off is temporary.
Historical crowded place restrictions functioned in much
the same way, and when those historical regulations differed,
it was often due to earlier generations placing an even greater
restriction on individuals carrying firearms. Americans in the
Founding era, and through Reconstruction, accepted that
their Second Amendment rights weakened in certain spaces.
Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30. In fact, because firearms were often alto-
gether prohibited in crowded spaces, the burden was greater
than under Section 65(a)(8). An individual disarmed before
and after the time spent at the crowded and confined ball or
fandango of years past, until he returned to the place where
his firearm was stored. Not true here. A concealed-carry li-
censeholder can keep his firearm with him as long as it is un-
loaded and secured during his time on public transit. See 720
ILCS 5/24-1(a)(4)(i)–(iii). Under Illinois’s regulation, a citizen
can step off the transit system, reassemble their firearm, and
go about their day with no further infringement on their
rights. When this aspect of the public transit firearm re-
striction’s “how” differs from the past, it does so in a way that
decreases the burden on Second Amendment rights. Un-
doubtedly the Second Amendment does not bar a state legis-
lature from finding ways to regulate firearms in a manner less
restrictive than relevant historical traditions.
There are more similarities in the “how.” Aside from nar-
row exceptions for those entrusted with positions of

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 35
authority, historical crowded place restrictions did not distin-
guish between different groups of citizens (such as whether
an individual had previously committed a crime). They did
not draw distinctions based on the type of firearm. Section
65(a)(8) shares those traits.
“[T]he penalty—another relevant aspect of the burden—
also fits within the regulatory tradition.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at
699. A violation of Section 65(a)(8) can be punished with im-
prisonment and a fine, see 430 ILCS 66/70(e), just like the pen-
alties for violating historical crowded place rules. See, e.g., An
Ordinance Respecting Public Balls (1817) (providing for a five
dollar fine); 1870 Tex. Gen. Laws 63, ch. 46, §1 (setting a fine
of $50 to $500); 1870 Ga. Laws 421, No. 285, § 2 (punishing
violations with a $20 to $50 fine and 10 to 20 days in jail).
These punishments are another reminder that crowded place
regulations developed from similar and earlier sensitive place
regulations. See, e.g., 1787 N.Y. Laws 344–45, ch. 1 (providing
for “fine and imprisonment” for bearing arms at polling
place); 1786 Va. Acts 35, ch. 49 (providing for imprisonment
for bringing arms to courthouse). Even when historical sensi-
tive and crowded place laws did not include imprisonment,
the shared principle with Section 65(a)(8) is that a violation
carries a legal consequence beyond getting kicked out and
banned from a space. The “how” is a match.
Next, we evaluate the “why.”23 The actual security risk at
any given crowded place, such as a social gathering, is sure to
23 “We confess to some skepticism about any test that requires the
court to divine legislative purpose from anything but the words that
wound up in the statute.” Bevis, 85 F.4th at 1200. As the Supreme Court
has said many times outside of the Second Amendment context, “legisla-
tive history is not the law.” Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, 584 U.S. 497, 523

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36 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
vary from location to location and from day to day. What mat-
ters is that the features of those places will always lead to a
different security calculus. We accordingly expect the govern-
ment to show why the features of public transit create “par-
ticular problems” that situate Section 65(a)(8)’s restriction on
arms bearing within our nation’s tradition. Rahimi, 602 U.S. at
692.
Here, the government has explained how public transit’s
unique physical characteristics mean that firearms create sim-
ilar problems there as in historically regulated crowded
places. Public transit can be extremely crowded, with com-
muters standing shoulder to shoulder during peak times.
Even when trains and buses are not densely packed with peo-
ple, they are “discrete, confined spaces” where it would be
difficult to avoid a person wielding a firearm. Antonyuk, 120
F.4th at 1027. The risk of wayward bullets striking an unin-
tended innocent target is high. What’s more, when vehicles
are in motion, escape is generally impossible.
Also relevant: a brandished weapon or gunfire could dis-
tract, injure, or kill a train or bus driver, endangering the lives
of everyone on the vehicle as well as anyone in its path. Public
transit is even more confined than ballrooms of the past. Rid-
ers face not just plaster and wood in a large building, but ra-
ther tubes made primarily of metal. We are also mindful that
first responders face a unique challenge in confronting an at-
tack on crowded and confined metal tubes containing
(2018). Nor can we “peer inside legislators’ skulls” to discern legislative
intent. Virginia Uranium, Inc. v. Warren, 587 U.S. 761, 777 (2019). When we
consider “why” a rule restricts firearms, therefore, we find it more illumi-
nating to look at the text and what the rule does rather than the subjective
intent of legislators. Bevis, 85 F.4th at 1200.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 37
hundreds or even thousands of commuters. And that chal-
lenge becomes even more difficult when law enforcement has
no way of knowing if an armed individual is an innocent ci-
vilian or the perpetrator of an attack.
These problems are inherent to the presence of firearms in
the space. Framed in that perspective, “why” Section 65(a)(8)
prohibits firearms in public transit is also why historical laws
banned guns in crowded spaces, and why the federal govern-
ment bans firearms on airplanes. Firearms are exceptionally
dangerous and lethal in confined areas with a high density of
people. As with the “how,” the “why” is match. Just like the
prototypical sensitive places laid out in Bruen—schools,
courthouses and legislative assemblies—public transit today
provides a function that is crucial to modern society.
Numerous historical comparators demonstrate why Sec-
tion 65(a)(8) is within the nation’s regulatory tradition. The
government offers three ways of analogizing between the se-
curity problems recognized as permissible justifications in
our history and the security problems posed by public transit:
crowds, vulnerable populations, and government-controlled
property.
First, the government says that public transit is “often
crowded,” like other sensitive places. Wolford, 116 F.4th at
1001. As we have observed throughout this opinion, Illinois’s
public transit system shares that characteristic with places
subjected to arms regulations throughout our nation’s his-
tory.
The government’s second way of analogy is that children
regularly take public transit. The record shows that all Chi-
cago public schools distribute CTA fare cards that allow

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38 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
students to take advantage of special student fares when us-
ing transit to attend classes. For many students, CTA serves
as the functional equivalent of a school bus. To be sure, we are
careful not to put too much weight on this similarity to
schools. The Second Amendment does not vanish in the pres-
ence of children. But the fact that public transit serves the
“vulnerable population[]” of children is a “why” that Section
65(a)(8) shares with historically permissible restrictions in
schools. Wolford, 116 F.4th at 1001.
Third, public transit is owned and operated by the govern-
ment. This is true of legislative assemblies, polling places, and
courthouses.24 It was generally not true of schools during the
Founding era. Regardless, we find this similarity between
public transit and most of the other sensitive places to be rel-
evant. The Supreme Court has recognized that “government
buildings” have maintained a longstanding tradition of fire-
arm restriction, although we do not read Bruen to necessarily
situate all government buildings within the category of
widely-accepted sensitive places. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30 (quot-
ing Heller, 554 U.S. at 626). Either way, the government’s
power to regulate conduct and maintain order on its own
property helps place laws like Section 65(a)(8) within our reg-
ulatory tradition.
Remember that millions of Illinois residents put their faith
in the government to safely take them where they need to go.
And those residents have decided, through their elected rep-
resentatives, that forbidding firearms is a method to achieve
this goal. The public transit firearm restriction is different
24 Some polling places may be privately-operated locations that are
temporarily in the control of the government during elections.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 39
from bans on firearms in privately-owned places, where Illi-
nois law might override an operator and a patron’s agreement
to allow firearms in an establishment.25 The people, by way of
the franchise, taxes, and fares, are both operator and patron
of public transit. Section 65(a)(8) reflects their shared under-
standing of how to operate in the space of public transit. The
Fourth Circuit has put it well: “Just as the Second Amend-
ment protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms,
the democratic process protects the right of the people to the
blessings of self-government.” McCoy v. Bureau of Alcohol, To-
bacco, Firearms & Explosives, 140 F.4th 568, 581 (4th Cir. 2025)
(upholding federal ban on commercial sale of handguns to in-
dividuals under the age of 21).
That dynamic does not license a majority of the people to
override the Second Amendment rights of a minority in
places run by the government. “[I]ndividual and democratic
rights do not extinguish one another in this important area....”
Id. In fact, while Cook County has argued that we should ap-
ply a “government proprietor” framework that effectively
withdraws firearm restrictions on government property from
the Bruen framework in favor of a rational basis test, we de-
cline to endorse that argument.26 We consider government
ownership at Bruen’s second step as a guidepost for locating
25 As this opinion should make clear, the government can make such
a collective security decision to deal with problems that are sufficiently
analogous to those addressed in our historical tradition of regulation.
What private establishments can be regulated under that test is a question
for another day.
26 It would be particularly inappropriate to recognize a “government
proprietor” exception because none of the named Defendants are the pro-
prietors of Illinois’s public transit systems.

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40 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
the public transit restriction within our nation’s tradition. It is
merely a relevant characteristic, neither necessary nor suffi-
cient.
We stress that this analysis should not stretch beyond rea-
son. Illinois cannot contend, for example, that the entire city
of Chicago is a sensitive place because parts of that city can be
crowded. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29 (“[T]here is no historical basis
for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a
‘sensitive place....’”). Nor could it say the same for even those
most crowded neighborhoods. The Second Amendment
equally grants the right to bear arms to those who live in high
density urban areas and those in rural communities. See id.
What follows from that proposition is that the particular
problem motivating a firearm ban in the Chicago Loop would
be little more than the innate risk of firearms in society, which
is inconsistent with the “balance struck by the founding gen-
eration....” Id. at 29 n.7.
By contrast, the Illinois public transit firearm restriction is
consonant with a crucial limiting principle for permissible
crowded and sensitive place regulations. Like sensitive and
crowded place laws throughout our nation’s history, the chal-
lenged statute only applies in discrete, easily defined loca-
tions. It bears repeating that “Firearms are dangerous” is a
justification outside of our regulatory tradition. “Firearms are
dangerous in this kind of place” can fall within that tradition.
A universal limiting principle is difficult to square with
the regulation-specific inquiry that Bruen mandates. We are
careful, however, to keep in mind that our decision today
must not vest too much power in the state’s hands. Doing so
would disrupt the carefully drawn protections of the Bill of
Rights. So we note that all we find necessary to decide in

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 41
rendering today’s decision is that a regulation does not offend
the Second Amendment because it is consistent with our his-
torical tradition when it: 1) temporarily regulates the manner
of carrying firearms; 2) in a crowded and confined space; 3)
where that space is defined by a natural tendency to congre-
gate people in greater density than the immediately adjacent
areas; 4) that space furthers important societal interests; and
5) the presence of firearms in that space creates a heightened
risk to maintaining public safety.
We stress that lower courts should not employ this sum-
mary of today’s decision as a test in all Second Amendment
challenges. “[C]ommon sense” informs the Bruen inquiry.
Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 698. Consider nuclear power plants. We
are not certain the principle set forth above would apply to all
nuclear power plants. And, the Founding generation, for all
their wisdom, had no opportunity to grasp that these facilities
would one day exist, let alone decide whether to incorporate
them into firearm laws. See Wolford, 116 F.4th at 980. In de-
fending a ban on firearms at nuclear power plants, the gov-
ernment would fare best if it produced evidence of historical
firearm restrictions at watermills, smelters or munitions
stockpiles. Yet even in the absence of such evidence, courts
would do Bruen no favors to pretend that it is impossible to
identify the shared principle with earlier sensitive place re-
strictions. Is there something about a nuclear power plant that
implies the general right to armed self-defense might tempo-
rarily dwindle there? The threat of radioactive cataclysm, we
think, carries that implication.
Likewise, we emphasize that public transit did not exist
until late in the 19th century. Even the post-Reconstruction-
era laws cited herein predate mass, government-operated

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42 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
transit. So, as we evaluate historical analogues, we must not
lose sight of the modern target of Illinois’s public transit fire-
arm restriction: systems comprised of metal tubes traveling
quickly, carrying hundreds of passengers at a time, and relied
upon by millions for their basic transportation. The Founding
and Reconstruction generations had no corollaries for a space
where bullets will ricochet and kill innocents and first re-
sponders during a shooting, where the very nature of the
space facilitates a quick escape by criminals, or where a terror
attack could paralyze free movement throughout a city. See id.
at 30 (“[T]he Second Amendment is [not] a regulatory
straightjacket....”). In such circumstances, Bruen and Rahimi’s
exhortations that we must identify a general principle, not a
historical twin, carry greatest force.
Any attempt to impose a test of strict similarity between
historical and current regulations would not only run afoul of
binding precedent, Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692, it would also jeop-
ardize the carefully drawn balance of power between the fed-
eral government—including federal courts interpreting the
U.S. Constitution—and the states. Murphy v. Nat’l Collegiate
Athletic Ass’n, 584 U.S. 453, 473 (2018) (“[A] healthy balance of
power between the States and the Federal Government [re-
duces] the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front.” (quot-
ing New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 181 (1992))). Part of
the historical tradition of regulation is using the states as “la-
boratories for devising solutions to difficult legal problems.”
Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Indep. Redistricting Comm’n,
576 U.S. 787, 817 (2015) (quoting Oregon v. Ice, 555 U.S. 160,
171 (2009)). “The people of some states may find the argu-
ments in favor of a lack of restrictions to be persuasive; the
people of other states may prefer tighter restrictions.” Bevis,
85 F.4th at 1203.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 43
The virtue of our federal system is that citizens who find
themselves on the losing end of legislative disputes in their
state may vote with their feet and move to a jurisdiction
where their views have prevailed. See Bond v. United States,
564 U.S. 211, 221 (2011) (explaining that federalism “makes
government ‘more responsive by putting the States in compe-
tition for a mobile citizenry.’” (quoting Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501
U.S. 452, 458 (1991))); see also New York, 505 U.S. at 181 (“[T]he
Constitution divides authority between federal and state gov-
ernments for the protection of individuals.”). If the law is not
to fossilize, see Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 691, there must remain
room for a national dialogue where the people and their
elected representatives try different solutions to their prob-
lems and compare the outcomes, so long as those policies are
cut from the same cloth as historical regulations.
Are we saying that the public transit firearm restriction is
constitutional? Yes. But we are not done, and our conclusion
is informed by the next part of this decision, which is a con-
tinued study of the crowded spaces evidence in the record.
The fabric of our national tradition will at times include reg-
ulations that do not strictly come from the government.
4. Illinois’s Public Transit Firearm Restriction is Akin to
Railroad Firearm Restrictions, As a Continued Thread
of Crowded and Confined Spaces Regulation
Here, we confront the government’s contention that 19th-
century railroad regulations are acceptable evidence for de-
termining history and tradition. We tend to agree, once more
aligning with the Ninth Circuit. In doing so, we emphasize
that this evidence corroborates the expansive tradition of reg-
ulation in sensitive and crowded, confined places laid out

-- 43 of 61 --

44 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
above, and removes any doubt that the public transit firearm
restriction is within that tradition.
The Ninth Circuit concluded that “[a] ban on the carry of
firearms on public transit almost certainly would be constitu-
tionally permissible if the law allowed the carry of unloaded
and secured firearms.” Wolford, 116 F.4th at 1002. It
“acknowledge[d] that public transit bears some features com-
mon to other sensitive places, such as government buildings
and schools.” Id. “Transit facilities are often crowded, they
serve some vulnerable populations, and they are State-
owned.” Id. As we explain above, these shared features are a
potent indication that firearm restrictions on public transit are
constitutional, but the Ninth Circuit turned to a different an-
alogue.
The Ninth Circuit primarily relied on the rules of private
railroad operators in the 19th century, as situated in the his-
torical tradition of crowded place regulations. Id. Plaintiffs’
objection to this maneuver is easy to anticipate: these rules
were not laws, so they are irrelevant to our analysis. This is
an area for caution, but we disagree with Plaintiffs’ wholesale
rejection of the regulations’ relevance. For one, the Supreme
Court’s decision in Bruen seemingly relied on private rules, in
part, to support the conclusion that schools are a sensitive
place.27
27 Bruen acknowledges schools as a sensitive place and shortly there-
after cites to an amicus brief that describes several firearm restrictions at
private universities. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30. The Eleventh Circuit has fol-
lowed this practice of consulting private university rules. Nat’l Rifle Ass’n,
133 F.4th at 1120.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 45
For another, it is not quite right to say that late 19th-cen-
tury railroads were strictly private entities. As the Ninth Cir-
cuit said:
[i]n examining historical evidence, rules and
regulations by private entities may inform the
historical analysis, particularly where, as with
train companies operating on the public right of
way, the “private” entities were providing es-
sentially a public service and were more
properly characterized as mixed public-private
entities.
Wolford, 116 F.4th at 1001. That characterization is endorsed
by an array of more contemporary Supreme Court decisions.
Lake Shore & Mich. S. Ry. Co. v. Smith, 173 U.S. 684, 690 (1899),
overruled on other grounds by Pa. R. Co. v. Towers, 245 U.S. 6
(1917) (“A railroad company, although a quasi public corpo-
ration, and although it operates a public highway has, never-
theless, rights which the legislature cannot take away without
a violation of the federal constitution....”) (internal citation
omitted); Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy R. Co. v. Iowa, 94 U.S.
155, 161 (1876) (stating that railroad companies are “given ex-
traordinary powers, in order that they may the better serve
the public” and are “engaged in a public employment affect-
ing the public interest”); Pine Grove Twp. v. Talcott, 86 U.S. 666,
676 (1873) (“Though the [railroad] corporation was private, its
work was public, as much so as if it were to be constructed by
the State.”). It also is supported in the record, where an expert
report from Dr. Brennan Rivas explains that legislatures made
special arrangements to authorize railway police to protect
the peace of passengers in transit.

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46 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
Because we are comfortable looking at these 19th-century
rules, we proceed to the “how” and “why” comparisons. This
part is straightforward. As described by Dr. Rivas and in Wol-
ford, six railroad companies prohibited passengers from car-
rying “guns,” or required guns to be kept “in cases and not
loaded,” or forced guns to be checked as baggage.28 Wolford,
116 F.4th at 1001. This “how” is nearly identical to Section
65(a)(8).
So is the “why.” Both the railroad rules and Section
65(a)(8) were “comparably justified,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29, by
a concern for public safety in confined, discrete, fast-moving
vehicles.29 See, e.g., Pa. R. Co. v. Langdon, 92 Pa. 21, 27 (1879)
(“The right of a railroad company to make reasonable rules
for its own protection, and for the safety and convenience of
passengers, has been repeatedly recognised.”); Poole v. N. Pa-
cific R. Co., 16 Or. 261, 264 (1888) (“For its own safety and con-
venience, and that of the public, a railroad company may
make reasonable rules and regulations for the management of
its business, and the conduct of its passengers.”).
Therefore, these rules—in coordination with the crowded
and sensitive places analysis discussed above—show a histor-
ical tradition that bears a marked similarity with Section
28 Plaintiffs cite an 1828 dictionary to assert that “gun” would have
been understood to only refer to rifles, not handguns. This definition pre-
cedes the relevant regulations by decades and is not compelling evidence
of their meaning.
29 Plaintiffs implausibly suggest that railroads banned guns because
they were unwieldly baggage and not because of public safety concerns.
As the State explains in its reply brief, this is hard to square with excep-
tions allowing unloaded guns or guns in cases.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 47
65(a)(8).30 What we have here is “[t]he most compelling evi-
dence ... of a consistent regulatory practice from ratification
onward.” United States v. Carbajal-Flores, 143 F.4th 877, 883
(7th Cir. 2025).
We could stop here. But Bruen and Rahimi convey a clear
message that the individual right to self-defense is an im-
portant fixture of our Constitution. So we have a bit more to
say about why Section 65(a)(8) is a permissible regulation.
5. Illinois’s Public Transit Firearm Restriction is Akin to
Lawful Time, Place, and Manner Speech Restrictions in
Sensitive Places
We have one more reflection. We have been told to draw
analogies to schools, legislative assemblies, polling places,
and courthouses. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29. First Amendment re-
strictions are ubiquitous in each location. Tinker v. Des Moines
30 Beyond transit vehicles, Section 65(a)(8) also prohibits carrying fire-
arms in “any building, real property, and parking area under the control
of a public transportation facility....” The parties say almost nothing about
this part of the law, which is tangential at best to Plaintiffs’ claims. Plain-
tiffs brought this litigation because they desire to ride trains and buses
while armed, not because they wish to carry firearms while walking
through a train station or waiting at a bus stop. Regardless, we have no
difficulty concluding that Illinois can also ban firearms in those transient
spaces. Many of the same analogies apply, and it would be entirely im-
practical, both for government enforcement efforts and for Plaintiffs, if
Section 65(a)(8) were to kick into effect the moment a person boards a
transit vehicle. As for parking areas outside transit stations, they are also
“a reasonable buffer zone such that firearms may be prohibited there.”
Wolford, 116 F.4th at 889. Plaintiffs, after all, are allowed to keep a firearm
in their vehicles so long as they secure it before exiting. We lastly note that
Illinois bans firearms in parking areas adjacent to many different loca-
tions, see generally 430 ILCS 66/65, so we leave the application of the sensi-
tive places doctrine to other parking areas for a later day.

-- 47 of 61 --

48 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 513 (1969) (permitting reg-
ulation of disruptive speech in schools); United States v. Nassif,
97 F.4th 968, 976 (D.C. Cir. 2024), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 552
(2024) (allowing Congress to prohibit speech and demonstra-
tions within the U.S. Capitol); Minnesota Voters All. v. Mansky,
585 U.S. 1, 12–13 (2018) (providing that polling places are
“government-controlled property set aside for the sole pur-
pose of voting” where speech is restricted); Braun v. Baldwin,
346 F.3d 761, 764 (7th Cir. 2003) (limiting speech that encour-
aged jury nullification in courthouses).
On top of that, in Anderson v. Milwaukee County, 433 F.3d
at 980, we upheld a restriction that prohibited passengers
from distributing literature while on public buses. We high-
lighted a few reasons why buses were a space where free
speech rights diminished. “[T]he bus is a governmentally con-
trolled forum....” Id. at 979. “Bus passengers are a captive au-
dience.” Id. at 980. “It is reasonable for the bus company to
attempt to ensure their comfort.” Id. “Furthermore, the bus
company has an interest in passenger safety.” Id. “Given the
nature of the forum, a ban on the distribution of literature on
buses passes constitutional muster.” Id.
First Amendment cases, including Anderson, involve the
means-ends scrutiny that Bruen prohibits, and we do not re-
peat that inquiry. (Even if we could, it would be substantively
different because the right to speak is not the same as the right
to carry a firearm.) At the same time, we doubt that the Su-
preme Court intended to completely divorce the First and
Second Amendments, especially when we look at restrictions
that are defined solely by reference to physical location. The
Court, indeed, has made direct comparison between the
Amendments. See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24 (“This Second

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 49
Amendment standard accords with how we protect other
constitutional rights. Take, for instance, the freedom of speech
in the First Amendment, to which Heller repeatedly com-
pared the right to keep and bear arms.”).
The government may lawfully restrict speech in the sensi-
tive places identified in Bruen. That common feature of these
places is important in a constitutional sense. And similar
speech limits on public transit align the public transit firearm
restriction with the principle that where one constitutional
right diminishes, so might another.
Ultimately, under Bruen’s test, we are not concerned with
whether the government has demonstrated a compelling in-
terest in regulating firearms on public transit. 597 U.S. at 29
n.7. Maybe Illinois has made a good policy choice, maybe not.
Our concern is whether the law aligns with the nation’s tradi-
tion. We hold that 430 ILCS 66/65(a)(8) is constitutional be-
cause it comports with regulatory principles that originated
in the Founding era and continue to the present.31
III. Conclusion
The district court in this case noted that it had “trouble ap-
plying what the Supreme Court said in Heller and Bruen” and
31 The section of the Concealed Carry Act that bans firearms on public
transit also forbids firearms in many other areas, including at any building
under the control of the executive and legislative branches of government,
childcare facilities, hospitals, establishments that earn a majority of their
revenue from serving alcohol, public gatherings that require the issuance
of a permit, parks, stadiums, libraries, airports, amusement parks, zoos,
museums, nuclear facilities, and more. See generally 430 ILCS 66/65. What
we have already said about daycares and nuclear power plants is dicta,
and we avoid writing more. We can only refer future courts to the reason-
ing employed in our review of the public transit restriction.

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50 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
was “doing the best” it could. Although we reverse, we cer-
tainly understand the district court’s reasoning and how it
reached its holding. Similarly, the Ninth Circuit finished its
opinion in Wolford with commentary that the “lack of an ap-
parent logical connection among the sensitive places is hard
to explain in ordinary terms” and that the “seemingly arbi-
trary nature of Second Amendment rulings undoubtedly will
inspire further litigation as state and local jurisdictions at-
tempt to legislate within constitutional bounds.” 116 F.4th at
1003.
Unsettled areas of the law are nothing new. We cannot yet
know if these are legal growing pains that will subside with
age, or if they signify a malady in need of a cure. And, for all
that lower courts may think, our job is to apply binding prec-
edent. If the current test proves unworkable, altering it is the
sole province of the Supreme Court.
Bruen and Rahimi leave some open questions. One chal-
lenge, as we have said, is how to resolve conflicting evidence
between different eras. Another is the stringency of the gov-
ernment’s burden: how many historical analogues are needed
to sustain a law? See, e.g., Bruen, 597 U.S. at 46 (“For starters,
we doubt that three colonial regulations could suffice to show
a tradition of public-carry regulation.”). Relatedly, how do we
know that the absence of historical regulation means that
modern regulation is unconstitutional, rather than a reflection
of different but permissible policy choices? Phrased differ-
ently, what evidence tells us when “founding-era legislatures
maximally exercised their power to regulate....”? Rahimi, 602
U.S. at 739–40 (Barrett, J., concurring). And with what “level
of generality” are we to view the similarity between a modern
regulation and its historical analogue? Id. at 740. Perhaps in

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 51
another case we will be called upon to work within Bruen to
resolve these questions. We need not address those issues
here because no matter the answers, Section 65(a)(8) is well
within our nation’s history and tradition of firearm regula-
tion.
We REVERSE the judgment of the district court and
REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

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52 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
ST. EVE, Circuit Judge, concurring. I agree with and join the
majority opinion in full. As the majority opinion explains, the
Plaintiffs here have standing (and we jurisdiction) because the
threat of criminal prosecution for engaging in constitutionally
protected activity is an injury-in-fact that a court may redress
through injunctive or declaratory relief. In such circum-
stances, a separate, unchallenged law also barring the activity
does not defeat redressability. See ante, at 10–11; Reps. Comm.
for Freedom of the Press v. Rokita, --- F.4th ----, No. 24-2927, 2025
WL 2218472, at *4 (7th Cir. Aug. 5, 2025); see also Animal Legal
Def. Fund v. Reynolds, 89 F.4th 1071, 1078 (8th Cir. 2024).
I write separately to highlight a difficult jurisdictional
question that today’s opinion prudently reserves for a future
case: how to assess redressability where a plaintiff defines her
injury as the inability to engage in protected activity—not the
threat of prosecution for doing so—and an unchallenged law
also prohibits that precise activity.
I.
To invoke the judicial power of the federal courts, litigants
must have standing. California v. Texas, 593 U.S. 659, 668
(2021). One element of the irreducible constitutional mini-
mum of standing is redressability, which demands that it be
“‘likely,’ as opposed to merely ‘speculative,’” that a favorable
decision will redress the plaintiff’s injuries. Lujan v. Defs. of
Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992) (quoting Simon v. E. Ky.
Welfare Rts. Org., 426 U.S. 26, 38, 43 (1976)).
The redressability requirement serves two functions. It
prevents the issuance of advisory opinions, and it generally
ensures “there is a sufficient ‘relationship between the judicial
relief requested and the injury suffered.’” Diamond Alt. Energy,

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 53
LLC v. EPA, 145 S. Ct. 2121, 2133 (2025) (quoting California v.
Texas, 593 U.S. at 671). Yet what constitutes a “sufficient” rela-
tionship is the subject of long-running debates, at least two of
which surface where a plaintiff challenges only a subset of the
laws precluding her desired conduct.
A.
The first debate asks how close the relationship between
the plaintiff’s alleged injury and the requested relief must be.
If it must be “likely” that a favorable decision will result in
redress, how probable is “likely”? Would a fifty percent
chance suffice? A seventy-five percent chance? See F. Andrew
Hessick, Probabilistic Standing, 106 Nw. U. L. Rev. 55, 66–68
(2012); 13A Wright & Miller’s Federal Practice & Procedure
§ 3531.6 (3d ed. 2025) (describing redressability determina-
tions as “a matter of uncertain prediction”). Furthermore,
should courts consider the likelihood of redress in relative or
absolute terms? If there are multiple independent barriers to
redress, would removing one suffice, or must the relief sought
lift all barriers? Compare Utah v. Evans, 536 U.S. 452, 464 (2002)
(requiring only that judicial relief “increase … the likelihood”
of redress), with Lujan, 504 U.S. at 561 (requiring judicial relief
actually make redress, itself, “likely”).
A recent decision from the Supreme Court illustrates con-
flicting trends in the law: Gutierrez v. Saenz, 145 S. Ct. 2258
(2025). In Gutierrez, a prisoner sought a declaratory judgment
that state post-conviction procedures violated his due process
rights by denying him access to DNA testing. The Fifth Cir-
cuit held that he lacked standing because a favorable decision
would not entitle him to testing; his prosecutor could deny
him access to the evidence on other grounds. Id. at 2262.

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54 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
The Supreme Court reversed, reasoning that the Fifth Cir-
cuit erred “in transforming the redressability inquiry into a
guess as to whether a favorable court decision will in fact ul-
timately cause the prosecutor to turn over the evidence.” Id.
at 2268. A declaratory judgment would remove an allegedly
unconstitutional barrier between the plaintiff and the re-
quested testing—and that was sufficient for redressability. Id.;
cf. Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 592 U.S. 279, 291 (2021) (ac-
knowledging that “a single dollar often cannot provide full
redress,” but holding that “a partial remedy” may satisfy re-
dressability); Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 525 (2007)
(finding redressability satisfied where motor vehicle regula-
tions would not “reverse global warming” but would elimi-
nate some greenhouse gas emissions contributing to it); Lar-
son v. Valente, 456 U.S. 228, 243 (1982) (holding that the re-
moval of a rule requiring the plaintiffs to register and report
on their activities sufficed for redressability even where an-
other rule could require the same).
Several Justices dissented in Gutierrez, citing Lujan.
Gutierrez, 145 S. Ct. at 2284 (Alito, J., dissenting) (protesting
that the majority “makes a hash of redressability”); see also id.
at 2269 (Barrett, J., concurring in the judgment). And in a sec-
ond case from the same term, the Court asserted a more strin-
gent formulation of redressability, requiring plaintiffs to
show that judicial relief will cause “predictable” responses
that will make redress of their injuries likely, in absolute
terms. See Diamond Alt. Energy, 145 S. Ct. at 2134; see also
Murthy v. Missouri, 603 U.S. 43, 57–58 (2024); Simon, 426 U.S.
at 38.
Reconciling these two lines of cases presents a challenge
for federal courts. But what it means for a favorable decision

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 55
to “likely” redress a plaintiff’s injury is not the only unsettled
area of the redressability doctrine.
B.
A second debate concerns the mechanism of constitution-
ally permissible redress. Where a favorable decision may re-
dress a plaintiff’s injury, must that redress run through the
court’s judgment, or may it stem from the persuasive power
and likely effect of a favorable, reasoned opinion?
In Haaland v. Brackeen, the Supreme Court adopted the for-
mer view:
Redressability requires that the court be able to
afford relief through the exercise of its power, not
through the persuasive or even awe-inspiring
effect of the opinion explaining the exercise of its
power. … It is a federal court’s judgment, not its
opinion, that remedies an injury; thus it is the
judgment, not the opinion, that demonstrates
redressability.
599 U.S. 255, 294 (2023) (citation modified). So where plaintiffs
seek declaratory relief, they must establish that the “preclu-
sive effect” of a favorable judgment would likely redress their
alleged injury, because “[w]ithout preclusive effect, a declar-
atory judgment is little more than an advisory opinion.” Id. at
293–294.
Taken at its fullest, Brackeen’s statement that redress must
derive from the power of a court’s judgment constitutes a
change in the redressability doctrine. See William Baude &
Samuel L. Bray, Proper Parties, Proper Relief, 137 Harv. L. Rev.
153, 179 (2023) (observing that Brackeen’s conception of re-
dressability “is not the conception that has always held sway

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56 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
in the past sixty years”). And it is a change with significant
impact on how we assess redressability where a plaintiff chal-
lenges only some of the laws barring her desired conduct.
To understand that impact, I must turn to an earlier case
from the Supreme Court, Renne v. Geary, 501 U.S. 312 (1991).
In Renne, the plaintiffs challenged a law prohibiting political
endorsements in nonpartisan elections, alleging it violated
their First Amendment rights. Id. at 314–15. In dicta, the Court
found “reason to doubt” the redressability of the alleged in-
jury because an unchallenged statute also barred the plain-
tiffs’ desired conduct, and “invalidation of [the challenged
statute] may not impugn the validity” of the unchallenged
one. Id. at 319. Implied, then, was the assumption that if inval-
idation would impugn the other law, meaning the same con-
stitutional reasoning applied to both, the plaintiff’s injury
could be redressable. Put more directly, Renne appears to
have assumed that redress could stem from the reasoning of
an opinion, not solely from a court’s judgment.
After Renne, we and several of our sister circuits assessed
whether an unchallenged law barred redressability by asking
whether the “fates” of the laws were “intertwined.” Hollis v.
Lynch, 827 F.3d 436, 442 (5th Cir. 2016), abrogated on other
grounds by United States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458 (5th Cir. 2024);
see also Harp Advert. Ill., Inc. v. Vill. of Chi. Ridge, 9 F.3d 1290,
1292 (7th Cir. 1993) (finding no redressability where a “valid”
unchallenged law also precluded the plaintiff’s desired activ-
ity); Maldonado v. Morales, 556 F.3d 1037, 1043–44 (9th Cir.
2009), cert. denied, 130 S. Ct. 1139 (2010) (reasoning that the
plaintiff had standing because a favorable ruling “would
likely allow him to surmount” an unchallenged, “similarly-
worded” law).

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 57
It seems questionable whether these precedents survive
Brackeen, leaving unsettled how we ought to approach re-
dressability analyses where an unchallenged law also bars the
plaintiff's desired conduct.
II.
This case illustrates the challenges federal courts face
when navigating these crosscurrents and new developments
in redressability law.
The Plaintiffs here alleged that the threat of prosecution
under 430 ILCS 66/70(e) for violating the transit restriction,
430 ILCS 66/65(a)(8), was an injury-in-fact redressable
through declaratory relief. I agree. The Plaintiffs further al-
leged, however, that their inability to bear guns on the CTA
and Metra was itself an injury-in-fact.
To assess the redressability of this second injury, we face
an early fork in the road. If we need not interrogate “whether
a favorable court decision will in fact” make it more likely that
the Plaintiffs can bear concealed weapons on public transit,
our analysis may be brief. See Gutierrez, 145 S. Ct. at 2268. A
favorable decision would remove a barrier to the Plaintiffs’
desired conduct and thus satisfy Article III’s redressability re-
quirement. See id. But under a more stringent application of
the Court’s redressability precedent, our analysis must con-
tinue. See Diamond Alt. Energy, 145 S. Ct. at 2133; Renne, 501
U.S. at 319.
We would next ask whether other, unchallenged laws also
bar concealed weapons on public transit. By my count, the de-
fendants and amici propose five: a CTA ordinance, a Metra
rule, two provisions of Illinois’s unlawful possession of weap-
ons statute, and a separate provision of Illinois’s Firearm

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58 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
Concealed Carry Act. See CTA Ord. No. 016-110 § 1 (28)
(2016); Passenger Code of Conduct, Metra, §§ III(I), IV(H); 720
ILCS 5/24-1(a)(4), (10); 430 ILCS 66/65(a)(5).1
Prior to Brackeen, our scrutiny of these unchallenged laws
may have been limited. Take CTA’s and Metra’s rules restrict-
ing weapons on their buses and trains. These rules largely
mirror Illinois’s transit restriction. So their fates are probably
“intertwined”; a declaratory judgment that the transit re-
striction unconstitutionally infringed the Second Amendment
would likely prove persuasive in a subsequent suit challeng-
ing the local laws. See Hollis, 827 F.3d at 442 (reasoning that
the plaintiffs had standing because if the challenged federal
firearm law was unconstitutional, the overlapping and un-
challenged state law was likely also unconstitutional).
But Brackeen instructs that redressability must stem from
the preclusive power of a court’s judgment. And to have pre-
clusive effect, a judgment must both bind the same parties
and resolve the same issues, actually and necessarily litigated
in the first suit. See Smith v. Bayer Corp., 564 U.S. 299, 307–08
(2011); see also 18 Wright & Miller, supra, § 4417. Here, it is
unclear whether a judgment against Illinois and Cook County
1 Whether each law independently precludes concealed carry on pub-
lic transit is a difficult question of state law that I (and the majority opin-
ion) do not purport to reach today. For example, Section 5/24-2(a-5) of Il-
linois’s unlawful possession of weapons statute seems to exempt con-
cealed carry license holders from prosecution under 5/24-1(a)(4) and (10),
even as (a)(4) and (10), as well as other provisions of Illinois law, appear
to evince contrary intent. See, e.g., 430 ILCS 66/70(f). And the cited CTA
ordinance does not apply to people “authorized” to carry weapons by
5/24-2, where 5/24-2 exempts concealed carry license holders from prose-
cution under provisions of 5/24-1 but does not “authorize” conduct.

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 59
declaring the transit restriction unconstitutional would meet
either requirement.
Begin with the parties. While Illinois may enforce transit
system rules through its trespassing statute, 720 ILCS 5/21-3,
the CTA and Metra, too, may enforce their own regulations.
See 70 ILCS 3605/27; 70 ILCS 3615/3B.09c. Yet neither the CTA
nor Metra are parties to this suit. A favorable decision would
not bind them, and declaratory relief thus may not redress the
Plaintiffs’ injuries. Indeed, the Tenth Circuit reached this con-
clusion in a very similar suit. See We the Patriots v. Grisham,
Inc., 119 F.4th 1253, 1259–61 (10th Cir. 2024) (holding the
plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge a state executive order
barring firearms from public parks where county and city or-
dinances also barred firearms and the plaintiffs only sued the
state).
The issues raised in a suit challenging CTA and Metra’s
regulations may prove distinct, too. For example, Cook
County asserts that Bruen does not apply to the transit re-
striction because the law is exempt from scrutiny under the
government-as-proprietor doctrine. See Wis. Interscholastic
Athletic Ass'n v. Gannett Co., 658 F.3d 614, 622 (7th Cir. 2011)
(“Where the state acts as a proprietor … its action will not be
subjected to the heightened review to which its actions as a
lawmaker may be subject.”); Wolford v. Lopez, 116 F.4th 959,
970–71 (9th Cir. 2024) (hypothesizing that a government bank
could exclude those bearing arms as an exercise of its propri-
etary rights). Alternatively, Cook County argues that the
transit restriction is a constitutional condition on government
funding. See Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 193 (1991).
The majority correctly rejects both theories. Illinois, which
enacted the transit restriction, is not the proprietor of the CTA

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60 Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644
or Metra. The State delegated that role to the CTA and Metra,
themselves. See 70 ILCS 3605/6 (vesting the “power to acquire,
construct, own, operate and maintain for public service a
transportation system in the metropolitan area of Cook
County” with the CTA); 70 ILCS 3615/3B.09c (assigning the
power to “make rules and regulations proper or necessary to
regulate the use, operation, and maintenance” of its property
and facilities to Metra’s Chief of Police). Moreover, criminal
laws, like the transit restriction, are necessarily exercises of
sovereign rights, not proprietary ones. So the government-as-
proprietor doctrine likely does not apply. Analogously, be-
cause the transit restriction relies on Illinois’s police power,
not its spending power, the unconstitutional conditions doc-
trine is likely also inapposite.
We therefore do not need to resolve the interplay between
Bruen, the government-as-proprietor doctrine, and the uncon-
stitutional conditions doctrine in this case. These issues are
not “necessarily raised” and “actually litigated.” A suit chal-
lenging CTA and Metra’s rules, on the other hand, may impli-
cate them. It seems unlikely, then, that a favorable judgment
here would preclude the CTA and Metra from enforcing or
defending their rules in a subsequent dispute with the Plain-
tiffs. And without this preclusive power, Brackeen instructs us
that the Plaintiffs lack standing.
One final observation. Even outside the government-as-
proprietor and unconstitutional conditions context, Second
Amendment plaintiffs seem especially likely to encounter
standing challenges under a more stringent conception of re-
dressability. Our system of cooperative federalism has pro-
duced an array of overlapping federal, state, and local laws
regulating firearms. And Bruen demands a fact-intensive

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Nos. 24-2643 & 24-2644 61
analysis of “how” and “why” each challenged law burdens
the Second Amendment right. Against this backdrop, it seems
improbable that challenges to two different laws would raise
the exact same issues. So a judgment declaring one law un-
constitutional would not preclude enforcement of the other.
III.
The federal courts’ approach to redressability is in flux.
New developments have unsettled how we assess standing
when overlapping laws bar activities the plaintiff alleges are
constitutionally protected. Absent further guidance, we must
proceed cautiously.

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