By MARK SHERMAN – The Associated Press
Monday, June 28, 2010; 11:54 AM

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court held Monday that Americans have the right to own a gun for self-defense anywhere they live, advancing a recent trend by the John Roberts-led bench to embrace gun rights.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices cast doubt on handgun bans in the Chicago area, but signaled that some limitations on the Constitution’s “right to keep and bear arms” could survive legal challenges.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said that the Second Amendment right “applies equally to the federal government and the states.”

The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and four liberals opposed. Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority.

Two years ago, the court declared that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess guns, at least for purposes of self-defense in the home.

That ruling applied only to federal laws. It struck down a ban on handguns and a trigger lock requirement for other guns in the District of Columbia, a federal city with unique legal standing. At the same time, the court was careful not to cast doubt on other regulations of firearms here.

Gun rights proponents almost immediately filed a federal lawsuit challenging gun control laws in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill, where handguns have been banned for nearly 30 years. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence says those laws appear to be the last two remaining outright bans.

Lower federal courts upheld the two laws, noting that judges on those benches were bound by Supreme Court precedent and that it would be up to the high court justices to ultimately rule on the true reach of the Second Amendment.

The Supreme Court already has said that most of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights serve as a check on state and local, as well as federal, laws.

Monday’s decision did not explicitly strike down the Chicago area laws. Instead, it ordered a federal appeals court to reconsider its ruling. But it left little doubt that the statutes eventually would fall.

Still, Alito noted that the declaration that the Second Amendment is fully binding on states and cities “limits (but by no means eliminates) their ability to devise solutions to social problems that suit local needs and values.”

The case is Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

– By a vote of 5 to 4, the justices said that a public university does not have to recognize a student religious group that wants to exclude gays and others who do not share its core beliefs. The University of California’s Hastings College of the Law said its anti-discrimination policy required officially recognized student groups to include all who wanted to join. The Christian Legal Society argued that being forced to include those who did not share its beliefs violated constitutional protections of freedom of association and exercise of religion.

The majority included the court’s liberal wing plus Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

The case is Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.

– The court rejected a claim from inventors who wanted to have their business method patented. A majority of the court said such a claim would be possible in some cases, but not in this one, where a patent was sought for a strategy for hedging risk in buying energy.

The case is Bilski v. Kappos.

The guns case was the logical sequel to the court’s 5 to 4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. That decision established for the first time that the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” referred to an individual right, not one related to military service. But the decision that there is a right to keep a gun in one’s home did not extend beyond the federal government and its enclaves such as Washington.

Gun rights activists immediately filed suit against the handgun restrictions in Chicago and the suburb of Oak Park.

“Today marks a great moment in American history,” said Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, in a statement. “This is a landmark decision. It is a vindication for the great majority of American citizens who have always believed the Second Amendment was an individual right and freedom worth defending.”

The court’s decision means that the enigmatically worded Second Amendment — “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” — identifies an individual right to gun ownership, like the freedom of speech, that cannot be unduly restricted by Congress, state laws or city ordinances.

Also voting in the majority were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer objected to the majority decision, and read his dissent from the bench. He disagreed with the majority that it is a fundamental right, and said the court was restricting state and local efforts from designing gun control laws that fit their particular circumstances, and turning over all decisions to federal judges. Joining him with dissenting votes were John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Stevens wrote his own dissent and did not join Breyer’s.

“Given the empirical and local value-laden nature of the questions that lie at the heart of the issue, why, in a nation whose constitution foresees democratic decision-making, is it so fundamental a matter as to require taking that power from the people?” Breyer wrote. “What is it here that the people did not know? What is it that a judge knows better?”