McDonald v. Chicago is the 2010 Supreme Court decision that made the Second Amendment binding on state and local governments. Decided 5–4 on June 28, 2010, the ruling struck down handgun bans in Chicago and the village of Oak Park, Illinois, and set a constitutional floor no city or state can drop below when regulating firearms. It answered the question the Court had deliberately left open two years earlier in District of Columbia v. Heller: whether the individual right to own a firearm for self-defense restrains every level of government, not just Congress and federal enclaves.1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago
The Chicago and Oak Park Handgun Bans
Chicago enacted its handgun ordinance in 1982. The city required all firearms to be registered and simultaneously stopped accepting new handgun registrations, so anyone who did not already own a registered handgun before the cutoff could never lawfully possess one. The practical effect was a near-total ban on handgun ownership for ordinary residents.1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago Oak Park went further, prohibiting handgun possession by nearly all private citizens. Both municipalities defended the laws as measures to protect residents from firearm injury and death.
Who Otis McDonald Was
Otis McDonald was a 76-year-old retired maintenance engineer living in the Morgan Park neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. His block had been hit hard by drug trafficking and gang activity, and McDonald himself had been burglarized five times. He owned shotguns for hunting but considered them impractical for defending his home. He wanted a handgun; Chicago’s ordinance made that illegal.1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago
McDonald and three other Chicago residents filed suit the day after Heller was decided, challenging the Chicago and Oak Park ordinances under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.2Legal Information Institute. McDonald v. Chicago Attorney Alan Gura, who had argued and won Heller, led the legal team.
Why the Case Was Necessary
In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, unconnected to service in a militia. That case struck down a Washington, D.C. handgun ban.3Library of Congress. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) But D.C. is a federal district, and Heller only addressed federal power. The Court expressly declined to say whether the amendment restricted states and cities, and the most aggressive handgun restrictions in the country were city ordinances like Chicago’s.
The Incorporation Question
The Bill of Rights originally restrained only the federal government. Through a doctrine called incorporation, the Supreme Court has used the Fourteenth Amendment to apply individual Bill of Rights protections to state and local governments one at a time. By 2010, most of the Bill of Rights had already been incorporated, including the freedoms of speech and religion, the Fourth Amendment, most of the Fifth and Sixth, and the Eighth.4Constitution Annotated. Modern Doctrine on Selective Incorporation of Bill of Rights The Second Amendment was a conspicuous holdout.
McDonald’s team offered two roads to incorporation. The standard route runs through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which forbids states from depriving anyone of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”5National Archives. 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights The test asks whether a right is “fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty” and “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.”4Constitution Annotated. Modern Doctrine on Selective Incorporation of Bill of Rights The bolder route ran through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause. McDonald’s lawyers argued that the clause was originally meant to make the entire Bill of Rights binding on the states, and that the Supreme Court had gutted it in the Slaughter-House Cases of 1873. They asked the Court to overturn that 140-year-old precedent.1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago
The 5–4 Ruling
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the plurality opinion, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Kennedy. Justice Clarence Thomas concurred in the result but wrote separately. Together they formed the five-justice majority that held the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments and struck down the Chicago and Oak Park ordinances.1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago
Alito’s Plurality Opinion
Alito took the Due Process route. Tracing the right to keep and bear arms through English common law, the founding era, the post-Civil War period, and state constitutions, he concluded that the right is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition” and therefore qualifies as fundamental. The plurality declined to disturb the Slaughter-House Cases, preferring the same framework the Court had used to incorporate nearly every other Bill of Rights provision over the previous century.1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago
Thomas’s Concurrence
Justice Thomas agreed on the outcome but refused to rest incorporation on the Due Process Clause. In his view, the Privileges or Immunities Clause was the historically correct vehicle, and the Slaughter-House Cases were wrongly decided. Thomas argued that the clause was designed to protect the rights of newly freed Black citizens from hostile state governments after the Civil War, and that the right to bear arms was among the core privileges its framers meant to guarantee.1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago No other justice joined him.
The Dissents
Justice Stevens wrote a lengthy dissent contending that handgun ownership is not a “liberty” interest the Due Process Clause protects. He accepted incorporation in principle but distinguished gun ownership from rights like free speech or the protection against unreasonable searches, and would have left states broad authority to regulate firearms.
Justice Breyer, joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, wrote separately. He argued the Second Amendment’s text, history, and purpose did not mark it as fundamental enough to warrant incorporation, and warned that binding the states would spawn endless litigation over which gun laws survive constitutional review and strip cities of tools they needed to address gun violence.
What Cities and States Can Still Regulate
The ruling forbids outright bans on handgun ownership by law-abiding citizens in their homes. It does not forbid firearm regulation generally. The plurality restated the “presumptively lawful” restrictions Heller had already endorsed:
- Laws prohibiting the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.
- Laws forbidding firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.
- Laws banning straw purchases by people buying guns for prohibited individuals.
The Court stated plainly that the right to bear arms “is not unqualified.”1Justia. McDonald v. City of Chicago Most post-McDonald litigation has been fought not over whether the Second Amendment binds the states, but over which specific regulations survive review.
What Came After: Bruen and the Modern Test
McDonald settled the incorporation question but gave lower courts limited guidance on how to evaluate specific gun laws. Federal appellate courts developed a two-step framework combining a scope inquiry with means-end scrutiny. In 2022, the Supreme Court rejected that approach in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, holding that gun regulations must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” to survive a Second Amendment challenge. Bruen also extended the right beyond the home, protecting the carrying of firearms in public for self-defense.6United States Supreme Court. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen Heller recognized the individual right, McDonald applied it to the states, and Bruen set the standard courts now use to test any law that burdens it.