Eye On Illinois: Government is about drawing (and often redrawing) lines

Government – specifically the legal system – is about drawing lines.

Consider Friday’s ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Iain Johnston finding the state can’t prohibit people with valid concealed-carry permits from bringing guns onto Metra or Chicago Transit Authority trains and buses (read it yourself at tinyurl.com/JudgeJohnston).

The ruling is one sliver of the long-running national discourse about gun laws. But, for the narrow purpose of today’s column, Johnston’s opinion offers a textbook example of the way various leaves on government branches subjectively decide where to place a boundary.

Among the arguments before Johnston was the framing of public transportation modules as “sensitive places” on par with schools or courtrooms. As Johnston alluded to, even the “sensitive places” issue comes with its own rich context understood through U.S. Supreme Court precedent that occasionally builds on and redefines two centuries of legal history.

To the non-lawyer, all that debate redounds to where we draw the lines. As Johnston wrote, “Treating any place where the government would want to protect public order and safety as a sensitive place casts too wide a net – this would seem to justify almost any gun restriction.”

For gun control hardliners, that’s precisely the point. But, for as much as the government imposes limitations on the public, there are indeed instances where that power is constrained.

You can’t smoke in an elementary school cafeteria but you can drink on a Metra train. You can carry a protest sign on the town square but you can’t stage a sit-in on CTA rails. Public buildings are not unlocked 24/7, libraries and planning departments and driver service facilities have normal business hours and no one meaningfully argues that draining the city pool after Labor Day abrogates constitutional protections.

Johnston’s opinion references polling places, which invite another gray area question because ballot boxes aren’t open year-round. I often early vote at our county’s central permit facility. To what extent does temporarily converting one large space in that building to a polling place change the way the entire structure is regulated? If I vote on Election Day, I go to a nearby church, which is decidedly not a government facility … until it is.

The point here isn’t focusing on gun laws. I could write 450 words about when Metra does and doesn’t allow pets on its trains (“non-peak period weekday trains arriving in Chicago before 6:31 a.m. and after 9:30 a.m., departing Chicago before 3 p.m. and after 7 p.m., and on all weekend trains” … unless the train is too crowded) or spend a different day parsing rules for bicycles and scooters.

Aside from its hot-button implications, Johnston’s ruling simply reminds us of the simmering potential for opening established policy to interpretation.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.