SCOTUS Lets Illinois Public Transit Carry Ban Stand, Leaving a Dangerous “Sensitive Places” Theory in Place - Ammoland.com

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied certiorari in Schoenthal v. Raoul, leaving in place a Seventh Circuit ruling that upheld Illinois’ ban on carrying firearms on public transportation. The denial appeared on the Court’s April 6, 2026, order list, where No. 25-541, Schoenthal, Benjamin, et al. v. Raoul, Att’y Gen. of IL, et al. was listed under “CERTIORARI DENIED.”

That means the Seventh Circuit’s September 2025 opinion remains controlling law in Illinois, at least for now. And the real problem here is not just the result in one state. It is the reasoning the lower court used to get there. The Seventh Circuit said Illinois’ public-transit carry ban is “comfortably situated in a centuries-old practice of limiting firearms in sensitive and crowded, confined places,” then went a step further and held that regulations in “crowded and confined places are ensconced in our nation’s history and tradition.”

Once a court starts treating “crowded” and “confined” as the metric for creating a “sensitive place” ban, anti-gun states are going to try to apply that logic everywhere they can.

If carry can be banned in a place because it is busy, enclosed, or hard to exit, the list of so-called sensitive places will never stop growing. Today, it is buses and trains. Tomorrow, it is train stations, public parks, entertainment districts, events, and any other place politicians decide feel is too populated for ordinary citizens to exercise a right. That is exactly the kind of interest balancing that Bruen was supposed to stop.

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