CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Free speech, right to bear arms, search and seizure, and due process claims based on gun seizure can go forward.

[Plaintiffs] allege that “[t]he actions taken against David Rhein … were done because of his political comments to a locally elected official some time before the illegal search and seizure that concerned David Rhein’s views about Americans’ Second Amendment rights that either the representative, someone in that representative’s office, and/or one of the Defendant Officers somehow construed (falsely) as evidence that David Rhein had a mental condition that made him dangerous”; that David “was unreasonably deemed mentally unfit based on the exercising of his free speech issues regarding the Second Amendment”; and that “[w]hile Coffman alleged in his letter that David Rhein had … a mental condition, this is totally without merit, [and] Coffman had no reasonable basis for making this conclusion.” These allegations are sufficient at this stage of the proceedings to support a claim that Defendants revoked David’s FOID card and took away his firearms in retaliation for his protected speech.

The Illinois Way.