In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 17-2998 KEVIN W. CULP, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. KWAME RAOUL, in his official capacity as Attorney General of the State of Illinois, et al., Defendants-Appellees. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois. No. 3:14-cv-3320 — Sue E. Myerscough, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED SEPTEMBER 20, 2018 — DECIDED APRIL 12, 2019 ____________________ Before MANION, HAMILTON, and SCUDDER, Circuit Judges. SCUDDER, Circuit Judge. Before us is a challenge to the scheme Illinois has enacted to license the concealed carry of firearms. The plaintiffs are out-of-state residents who contend that Illinois law discriminates against them in a way that fore- closes their receiving a license in violation of the Second Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Two years ago we considered and rejected 2 No. 17-2998 the same challenge from the same parties in an appeal from the denial of their request for a preliminary injunction. The case returns on the same evidentiary record following entry of summary judgment for the State. Illinois has regulated the public carrying of firearms by en- acting the Firearm Concealed Carry Act and seeking to ensure that licenses issue only to individuals—residents and nonres- idents alike—without substantial criminal and mental health histories, with the State then undertaking regular and rigor- ous monitoring to verify ongoing compliance. Illinois moni- tors the compliance of in-state license holders by accessing the robust, real-time information available about its residents. But monitoring compliance of out-of-state residents is limited in material ways by Illinois’s inability to obtain complete and timely information about nonresidents—for example, about a recent arrest for domestic violence or a voluntary commit- ment for inpatient mental health treatment. Illinois cannot compel this information from other states, nor at this time do national databases otherwise contain the information. The State has sought to overcome this information deficit not by holding out-of-state residents to different standards than residents for obtaining a concealed-carry license, but by issuing licenses only to nonresidents living in states with li- censing standards substantially similar to those of Illinois. In this way, Illinois’s “substantially similar” requirement func- tions as a regulatory proxy, as the State’s indirect means of obtaining adequate assurances that individuals licensed to carry a firearm in public remain fit and qualified to do so. We conclude that Illinois’s substantial-similarity require- ment—the centerpiece of its approach to nonresident con- cealed-carry licensing—respects the Second Amendment No. 17-2998 3 without offending the anti-discrimination principle at the heart of Article IV’s Privileges and Immunities Clause. I A The path to (and limitations on) the concealed carrying of firearms in Illinois owes much to the Supreme Court’s deci- sion in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). There the Court held that the Second Amendment confers “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in the defense of hearth and home.” Id. at 635. Concluding that “the inherent right of self-defense has been ...
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