It bears Rahm Emanuel’s signature and a six-figure amount that underscores the price of liberty, according to the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).
It’s a check for $399,950 sent to SAF by the City of Chicago as reimbursement for expenses the gun rights organization racked up when it successfully took the city to court in the landmark McDonald v. City of Chicago lawsuit.
Decided by the Supreme Court in June 2010, that case led to the incorporation of the Second Amendment individual rights decision in the Heller case to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Others may have gotten credit for the victory, but SAF filed and fought the case, and paid the legal bills, and after more than a year of legal wrangling, Chicago finally had to pay up.
“It was the single largest check that has ever come through the doors,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb.
The money went right back into SAF’s legal action fund, and with no small degree of irony, it will likely help pay current legal bills associated with two more federal lawsuits SAF has filed, one against the City of Chicago’s gun ordinance, and the other which challenges Illinois statutes that ban the carrying of loaded firearms in public for personal protection. Illinois is the only state remaining where there is no concealed carry statute.
What SAF has experienced in its litigation against Chicago, Gottlieb said, is the city’s tactic of requesting additional depositions and other legal maneuvers that require attorneys’ and witnesses’ time and travel expenses.
The check finally arrived weeks after it was due in December, and a couple of days after SAF lost the first round in its Moore v. Madigan case regarding concealed carry. The judge in that case, Sue E. Myerscough, an Obama appointee in 2010, dismissed the lawsuit. In her 48-page ruling, she wrote, “This Court finds that the Illinois ‘Unlawful Use of Weapons’ and ‘Aggravated Unlawful Use of a Weapon’ statutes do not violate Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights.” “The United States Supreme Court and the Seventh Circuit have recognized only a Second Amendment core individual right to bear arms inside the home,” Myerscough wrote. “Further, even if this Court recognized a Second Amendment right to bear arms outside of the home and an interference with that right, the statutes nonetheless survive constitutional scrutiny.” SAF attorneys immediately filed an appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Myerscough, who previously had served on the Illinois Appellate Court, also wrote that, “This Court finds further support for its conclusion in recent decisions of the Illinois Appellate Court, which has also concluded that Heller and McDonald affirm a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the home but not outside of the home…” She further contended that, “…assuming, arguendo, that there is a right to bear arms outside of the home, such a right is not a core Second Amendment right as defined by the Heller Court, which defined the core of the right as the right to bear arms.
The Washington Times also featured an article on the legal bill. (LINK)
