What did the Supreme Court say in McDonald v. City of Chicago?
About this video
This video explains why Heller, a case from Washington, D.C., did not settle whether the Second Amendment limits state governments, and how McDonald v. City of Chicago answered that question. In 2010 the Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment, so an individual right to own a gun is protected against both federal and state interference.
You'll be able to
- explain why the Bill of Rights applied directly in Heller but not automatically to the states.
- explain what incorporation through the 14th Amendment means.
- state what the Supreme Court decided in McDonald v. City of Chicago.
Key words
- federal enclave
- An area, like the District of Columbia, under federal control where the Bill of Rights applies directly.
- Bill of Rights
- The first ten amendments to the Constitution, which originally limited only the federal government.
- 14th Amendment
- An amendment ratified in 1868 that protects various freedoms against infringement by state governments.
- incorporation
- The process by which the Supreme Court decides that a Bill of Rights provision applies to the states through the 14th Amendment.
- test case
- A lawsuit brought on purpose to get a court to decide an important legal question.
Transcript
The Heller case. One thing that's really important to understand about the Heller case is that because it was brought in Washington, D.C, it involved a direct challenge to a federal regulation because the District of Columbia is a federal enclam. It's a federal jurisdiction to which all of the rights in the Bill of Rights apply directly. In the states, there's a wrinkle in that the Supreme Court has held consistently that the Bill of Rights does not apply directly to the states, instead it's the 14th Amendment that was ratified in 1868 that protects various freedoms against infringement by state governments. What the Court has done is essentially looked at discrete provisions of the Bill of Rights to determine whether they are incorporated against state governments. Every time, let's looked at this question, it has said, yes, and we're about 98% of the way there. There's only a couple of provisions of the Bill of Rights that they have yet to answer this question.
But in 2008, when the Heller case came down, guess what? Whether the right to own a gun was protected by the 14th Amendment, or another way to put it would be whether the second Amendment is incorporated through the 14th, was an unanswered question. My colleague, my co-counsel, Alan Gura, set up another test case in Chicago, on behalf of a man named Otis McDonald, who wanted to own a handgun for self-protection in his home in Chicago, and was prohibited from doing that because of the complete ban on handguns that Chicago had. That case went up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 2010, the Supreme Court with the same majority and the same dissent said, yes. We told you in Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun, and now we're telling you that the 14th Amendment incorporates
the Second Amendment and protects an individual right to own a gun as against state interference. The federal government is restrained by the second, the state government is restrained by the 14th, and regardless of whether it's the federal government or the state government taking away your gun, you have a constitutional right to own it.
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