AR-15 Ban Challengers Tell Supreme Court the Cook County Case Is Not Moot, Add Two Declarations

On November 11, 2026, the petitioners in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, told the Supreme Court that their challenge to Cook County’s semiautomatic rifle ban is not moot and asked the justices to deny the county’s request to dismiss it. The 13-page response, signed by David H. Thompson of Cooper & Kirk for Christopher Khaya, the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation, answers the county’s November 5 suggestion of mootness three weeks before the December 2 argument.

Cook County filed the suggestion after lead petitioner Cutberto Viramontes moved on October 29 to leave the case under Rule 46.2. The county argued that Khaya, the remaining individual petitioner, wants an IMI Galil, a rifle the petitioners themselves described in the district court as largely based on the AK-47, and that his interest falls outside the question the Court agreed to hear.

The response says the county’s filing “is phrased in jurisdictional terms, but it is really an argument about the scope of the question presented.” That question asks whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee the right to possess AR-15 platform and similar semiautomatic rifles, and the petitioners say the words “similar semiautomatic rifles” would do no work if they covered only AR-15 variants. If anything is similar to an AR-15, they write, an AK-47-style rifle such as the Galil qualifies.

The brief turns the county’s own ordinance against it. Section 54-211 of the county code bans rifles by feature, such as the capacity to accept a large-capacity magazine together with a folding, telescoping or thumbhole stock, and also lists the AR-15, the AK-47 and the Galil by name. At summary judgment the county called the Galil an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle, and in its merits brief it defined every rifle banned by name as an “AR-15 platform weapon.” “The County cannot treat these rifles as interchangeable for purposes of regulation but somehow meaningfully different for purposes of this litigation,” the response says, arguing that the county has waived or forfeited the point under Supreme Court Rule 15.2. The petitioners add that their district-court statement about the Galil’s AK-47 origin addressed design lineage, not similarity.

On standing, the response cites Horne v. Flores for the rule that at least one petitioner must hold a personal stake in the outcome, and says Khaya holds one because the ordinance bars the Galil he wants and the requested relief includes nominal damages. It says the county’s common-use argument wrongly zeros in on one model, when District of Columbia v. Heller assessed handguns as a class, and that target shooting, the use Khaya called most likely, is a lawful purpose.

Two declarations in the appendix put the AR-15 itself back in the case. Khaya, a Cook County resident and a member of both groups, declared on October 21 that one additional firearm he wants is a semiautomatic AR-15 platform rifle, “which I would acquire and possess in Cook County were it lawful for me to do so.” Ed Smolen, a resident of Elmwood Park since 2000 and a member of the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Second Amendment Foundation, declared on November 10 that he has owned an AR-15 platform rifle since 2011 but keeps it out of state, and that he would keep it at his Cook County home for lawful purposes including self-defense. The brief cites Parents Involved v. Seattle School District, Universal Life Church v. Nabors and Worth v. Jacobson for the rule that an organization may name another member with a live claim after the original member’s claim ends, and it says no declaration from Viramontes is needed because associational standing has rested on Khaya from the outset.

A footnote agrees with the county on one point. Even if the Court dismissed the Cook County case, it could still decide the same question in Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, the Connecticut case consolidated with it. SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut said in a statement carried by AmmoLand that “there’s every reason this case can and should continue” and that the group will argue Grant on December 2 regardless.

The Court had not acted on the suggestion of mootness or on Viramontes’s motion as of the November 13 docket, which lists the response as submitted on November 11. The justices granted the Solicitor General divided argument time on November 9, and the consolidated cases remain set for Wednesday, December 2, 2026, with one hour allotted.