Overview
- The Supreme Court announced on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, that it has granted review and consolidated Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins for argument in its October term.
- The cases ask the Court to decide whether AR‑15‑platform and similar semiautomatic rifles are arms protected by the Second Amendment as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
- Lower courts in the 2nd and 7th Circuits upheld Connecticut’s post‑Sandy Hook restrictions and Cook County’s longstanding ordinance, and those rulings are now before the justices.
- A decision for the challengers could invalidate assault‑weapon bans in roughly a dozen states and major cities while a ruling for the jurisdictions would preserve those local and state restrictions.
- The Court will apply the Bruen framework requiring historical analogues for modern gun rules, and the outcome will test how the current conservative majority balances public‑safety claims about mass shootings against claims that AR‑15s are widely owned for lawful uses.