The brief decision from Senior Judge Milton Shadur is in the newly filed lawsuit challenging Chicago's handgun ban, McDonald v. City of Chicago (N.D. Ill.); it's minor, but I thought I'd note it nonetheless, because it might foreshadow what we might see in the future in this important case:

This newly-filed action has been assigned to this Court’s calendar. From a reading of the Complaint it appears that plaintiffs’ counsel may view this litigation--which is entitled to serious consideration on its own merit--as a vehicle for some other purposes as well. This memorandum order is issued sua sponte to strip the Complaint of some surplusage--listed in the order of appearance, rather than in any effort to rank the stricken allegations in terms of importance--that does not conform to the directive of Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a) as to the content of a federal complaint.

1. Because yesterday’s Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, 554 U.S. __, 2008 WL 2520816 (U.S. June 26) requires no independent justification for the ownership and possession of firearms under the Second Amendment (see Complaint ¶34), all but the first sentence of each of Complaint PP1 through 4 are stricken.

[Footnote, slightly moved: Nothing in the Supreme Court's opinion addresses the registration and licensing requirements targeted by the Complaint (see Heller, 2008 U.S. LEXIS 5268, [WL] at *28 n.26 and *30), and no view is of course expressed here as to such substantive issues.]

2. Complaint ¶8 appears to reflect an inaccurate characterization of the form of government that is prescribed for the City of Chicago. Absent some showing to the contrary by plaintiffs’ counsel, that paragraph will be stricken, Richard Daley will be dismissed as a defendant and all of the Complaint’s references to “Defendants” will be converted to singular form.

3. Because 28 U.S.C. §§2201 and 2202 are not independent sources of federal subject matter jurisdiction, reference to those sections is stricken from Complaint ¶9.

4. Complaint ¶¶40 through 45 are stricken as patently inappropriate.

5. All of the Complaint’s references to “Cause of Action” are also stricken. In that respect, see NAACP v. American Family Mut. Ins. Co., 978 F.2d 287, 291-93 (7th Cir. 1992)).

Here are the relevant portions of the complaint:

1. Plaintiff Otis McDonald is a natural person and a citizen of the United States, residing in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. McDonald resides in a high-crime neighborhood and is active in community affairs. As a consequence of trying to make his neighborhood a better place to live, Mr. McDonald has been threatened by drug dealers.

2. Plaintiff Adam Orlov is a natural person and a citizen of the United States, residing in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Orlov is a former Evanston, Illinois, police officer. As a police officer, Mr. Orlov was entrusted with a handgun for the purpose of defending himself and others from violent crime.

3. Plaintiff Colleen Lawson is a natural person and a citizen of the United States, residing in Chicago, Illinois. Ms. Lawson’s home has been targeted by burglars.

4. Plaintiff David Lawson is a natural person and a citizen of the United States, residing in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Lawson’s home has been targeted by burglars....

40. Many Chicago gun owners fail to re-register their firearms every year. Among these recently was Alderman Richard Mell, whose firearms became unregisterable when he failed to timely renew his registration certificates.

41. Accordingly, Alderman Mell proposed an ordinance amending the law to permit, for one month, lapsed guns to be re-registered if their owners had attempted to re-register their guns between May 1, 2007 and April 1, 2008, a period that would have covered his lapsed firearm registrations.

42. Defendant Mayor Daley endorsed Mell’s proposal, stating: “A lot of people go back and forth to their summer homes ... A lot of people move their shotguns. A lot of ’em are bird hunters, gun collectors.... They move ’em back from Wisconsin, Michigan, [other] parts of Illinois.”

43. Defendant Mayor Daley added: “It’s one time [for] one month ... You want to have ’em register. There’s nothing wrong with that ... People want to just register. A lot of ’em bring ’em back from hunting trips. So, why not?”

44. Speaking of Alderman Mell’s desire to re-register his lapsed guns, Defendant Mayor Daley stated: “He has a home in Wisconsin. He brings ’em back and forth. He’s not running out with a shotgun and hurting people.

45. The proposed re-registration amnesty bill was passed by the Chicago City Council, with the amnesty period extended to 120 days. The fee for re-registering a lapsed firearm under the amnesty bill is $60.00.”

My questions: (1) The main issue in this case is to what extent the Second Amendment applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment. It's at least conceivable that the Amendment might apply to the states differently than it does to the federal government; this is an unlikely result, but one the Court reached in the early 1970s as to the Jury Trial Clause, which has been read as requiring unanimous juries in federal prosecutions but not state prosecutions. If this is so, then is it clear that the remaining sentences of paragraphs 1 through 4 are surplusage? Or is the judge simply assuming that the Second Amendment is either fully incorporated or not at all incorporated, so that Heller view -- which is that the right to keep and bear arms doesn't require any special justification on the claimant's part -- is dispositive?

(2) Why doesn't the material related to the reregistration ordinance potentially undermine the strength of the government's likely argument that the ordinance's constraints on law-abiding citizens are really needed to fight crime (quite independently of the digs at the supposed self-dealing by Chicago officials)? True, it might prove to be irrelevant, but that's not clear now. Or is it just that the proper place for introducing such matters is at trial and in pretrial motions, rather than in the complaint?