The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a request to block state and local laws barring the sale of assault-style weapons in Illinois while a group of challenges to those laws continues in the lower courts. There were no dissents publicly recorded from the unsigned order, nor did the justices provide any explanation for their decision. [More]
I’m going to resist reading more into this for now.
[Via Jess]
IANAL, but from my understanding, higher courts usually will not intervene while a case is still being played out in lower courts. They’ll wait until the lower courts finish before stepping in.
So SCOTUS isn’t necessarily punting the issue, as many imply. They are waiting to see how the District and Circuit courts decide before looking into whether they decided rightly or wrongly.
OTOH, “A right delayed…”, and all that. But this is not unusual.