National news has it wrong and the temporary restraining order doesn’t extend to all Illinoisans.
“Immediately after the ruling, Fox 32 picked up the story and eventually the national Fox News reported it,” said DeVore. “Mike Flannery said he knows it’s not correct and that he was going to try and get them to change it. It’s 100% inaccurate and not true and it is unfortunate that news agencies rely on each other and I understand they have to. All I can do is tell those news agencies it is wrong.”
Mike Flannery is the political editor at FOX 32 News.
Tom DeVore filed a case with an Effingham County court and the judge Joshua Morrison issued a TRO and this only extended to the plaintiffs named in the case. These plaintiffs paid DeVore $200 to be named in the suit and to have DeVore represent them.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, a Democrat, appealed Morrison’s ruling but the three-judge appellate court upheld the restraining order in a 2-to-1 decision.
Fox News reported, “The appellate court said the restraining order can stay in place and extended its scope beyond the plaintiffs to apply to all of Illinois”
The Fifth District appellate court of Illinois upheld the restraining order but did not extend it to people other than the plaintiffs named.
Over 800 Illinois citizens and several gun merchants brought a lawsuit against the state over the law, saying it was “enacted improperly” and “violated the state and US Constitutions equal protection clause in providing exemptions for some groups of people based on their occupation or training” such as former law enforcement
Perhaps a part in the ruling was misinterpreted, the court said the plaintiffs’ suit had “a likelihood of success on the merits” in that the gun law likely violated their equal protection as granted under the US Constitution.
DeVore said that people who aren’t lawyers have to be careful of the language in the ruling.
“All that means is that at this stage, ‘Yeah it seems they violated your Constitutional rights.’ Once that case is complete and it is over… then it would take over statewide. But right now this case it at it’s early stages and that finding by that court does not mean that this law (the gun ban) doesn’t still apply to people outside the case. It has not matured into a completed lawsuit,” said DeVore.
DeVore said, similarly to the SAFE T Act, it has to go up to the Illinois Supreme Court and they can issue a stay.
An appellate court can’t issue something like a stay, only the Illinois Supreme Court can apply a stay statewide.
Could DeVore have presented a case that didn’t just apply to plaintiffs who paid him money to be named as plaintiffs?
DeVore said maybe, but 99.9% of the time it is never successful.
“If you try to do that and make it that broad in a state court you run the risk of losing all the arguments altogether,” said DeVore. “Federal courts you can do that more broadly, but in a state court it is not something I would do.”
