On October 29, 2026, Cutberto Viramontes asked the Supreme Court to drop him as a petitioner in Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, the challenge to Cook County, Illinois’s ban on AR-15-style rifles. The Court has consolidated that case with Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, the Connecticut challenge, and set both for argument on Wednesday, December 2, 2026. The filing itself answers the obvious question: the AR-15 question is still before the Court.
What the Motion Says
The docket for No. 25-238 records a “Motion to Dismiss Petitioner Cutberto Viramontes Pursuant to Rule 46.2,” signed by David H. Thompson of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC, counsel of record for the petitioners. The body of the motion is a single paragraph:
“Pursuant to Supreme Court Rule 46.2, Petitioner Cutberto Viramontes respectfully moves for his dismissal from the above-captioned case. No fees or costs are currently due to the Clerk. This motion does not apply to any other petitioner. No other petitioner is seeking dismissal, so this case remains pending as to all other petitioners.”
The motion gives no reason for Mr. Viramontes’s decision, and I will not supply one. Its operative sentence is the last one: the case remains pending as to all other petitioners. Those petitioners are Christopher Khaya, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation, each of whom appears in the petition’s list of parties to the proceeding. None of them has moved to leave.
Rule 46.2(a) lets a petitioner file a motion to dismiss, and it gives the adverse party fifteen days to object, but only on narrow grounds. An objection must be “limited to the amount of damages and costs in this Court alleged to be payable or to showing that the moving party does not represent all petitioners or appellants.” That second ground explains why the motion states so carefully that it speaks for Mr. Viramontes alone. If no objection is filed, Rule 46.2(c) provides that “the Clerk, without further reference to the Court, will enter an order of dismissal.” I expect the motion to be granted, though that is an expectation and not something the docket shows. If it is, the caption may change. The case will not.
Why More Than One Plaintiff Matters
The episode illustrates a rule of public-interest litigation: sue with many plaintiffs, including organizations. Cases of this kind take years, and a plaintiff’s circumstances, profession, residence, or health can change before the Supreme Court rules. The history of District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), is the example I know best. Several residents sued the District over its handgun ban, but the D.C. Circuit held in Parker v. District of Columbia, 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. Cir. 2007), that only Dick Heller had standing, because he alone had applied to register a handgun and been refused. Heller carried the case to the Supreme Court because he was the plaintiff left standing. The Viramontes petitioners include two individuals and two national organizations.
Two Cases, No Exit
The Court’s decision to grant certiorari in Viramontes and, on the same day, in Grant, is the second safeguard. I have argued, including at the Second Amendment Foundation’s Gun Rights Policy Conference, that the Justices took two cases from two circuits so that no single jurisdiction could moot the question by repealing its law. That analysis is in my earlier piece on the consolidated grants. Mr. Viramontes’s motion does not touch it. Nothing on the docket suggests that any Connecticut petitioner is leaving, and I also see no political path by which Connecticut’s leadership, after years of defending its ban, would legalize the rifles at issue to avoid a ruling.
The Question Does Not Depend on These Cases
Suppose, hypothetically, that both cases disappeared. The question would still reach the Court. In Barnett v. Raoul, 180 F.4th 1035 (7th Cir. 2026), a divided Seventh Circuit panel on July 9, 2026, again upheld Illinois’s ban on AR-15-style rifles and standard-capacity magazines, reversing a final judgment for the plaintiffs. The Barnett plaintiffs have not yet filed their certiorari petition. On October 19, Justice Barrett extended their deadline to December 4, 2026, on an application stating that this Court granted certiorari in Viramontes, a decision that “explicitly relied upon Bevis.” In 2024, Justice Thomas, in a statement respecting the denial of certiorari in Harrel v. Raoul, 144 S. Ct. 2491, 2493, wrote that “if the Seventh Circuit ultimately allows Illinois to ban America’s most common civilian rifle, we can—and should—review that decision once the cases reach a final judgment.” The Seventh Circuit has now done what Justice Thomas described.
My Read
A petitioner’s withdrawal is a procedural event, not a development in the law. I expect argument on December 2 and a decision by June 2027, and I expect the Court to answer, finally, whether the most popular rifle in America is protected by the Second Amendment. Eddie Grant, whose petition is the other half of this pairing, shows no sign of leaving.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.