{"id":106753,"date":"2025-01-14T05:13:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-14T11:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=106753"},"modified":"2025-01-14T05:13:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T11:13:21","slug":"106753","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=106753","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

SCOTUS Rejects Multiple Second Amendment Cases, Relists Gun Ban Challenges<\/a><\/p>\n

On a day when gun-rights advocates hoped that the Supreme Court would announce its next big Second Amendment case, it only informed them which ones it was turning away.<\/p>\n

On Monday, the High Court denied petitions for certiorari in\u00a0Maryland Shall Issue v. Moore<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Gray v. Jennings<\/em>. The cases challenged Maryland\u2019s handgun-purchase licensing requirements and the preliminary injunction standard set in the case against Delaware\u2019s sales ban on \u201cassault weapons\u201d and \u201clarge-capacity\u201d ammunition magazines.<\/p>\n

None of the justices wrote separately to explain or dissent from the denials.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s orders list dashes the hopes of gun-rights activists looking to overturn lower court decisions upholding the gun-control laws in question. It continues the Supreme Court\u2019s recent\u00a0<\/span>streak of rejecting<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Second Amendment petitions, even as it\u00a0<\/span>agrees to hear government requests<\/span><\/a>\u00a0for review of decisions striking gun laws down. It could fuel further concern among gun-rights activists about the\u00a0<\/span>Court\u2019s<\/span>\u00a0resolve to expand on the standard it set in 2022\u2019s\u00a0New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/em>\u00a0and address state-level gun bans or several other of its longest-standing constitutional concerns.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the Court left open the possibility it would take some of the highest-profile gun cases still pending before it. The Court relisted two other closely watched Second Amendment cases,\u00a0Snope v. Brown<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ocean State Tactical v. Rhode Island<\/em><\/a>, to be considered again at this Friday\u2019s conference. That keeps gun-rights supporters\u2019 hopes alive for a Supreme Court grant of review of state bans on so-called assault weapons and large-capacity magazines.<\/p>\n

With no guidance on how the justices feel about those two cases and the possibility that the Court could relist them multiple times before deciding whether to take them up, those wondering about the future of Second Amendment jurisprudence face an uncertain timeline for further clarity. Still, Monday\u2019s order list indicated what areas of gun law the Court won\u2019t expound upon for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Moore<\/em>\u00a0concerned a Maryland law requiring residents to obtain a \u201cHandgun Qualification License\u201d before legally purchasing a handgun. Maryland Shall Issue, a local gun-rights group, challenged the law on the grounds that its requirements\u2014which include several hours of approved training, fingerprinting, fees, and a background check that can collectively take up to a month to complete\u2014were too onerous and expensive to pass constitutional muster.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0November 2023, a three-judge panel for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and\u00a0struck down the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaryland\u2019s law fails the new\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0test,\u201d Judge Julius N. Richardson, a Donald Trump appointee,\u00a0wrote at the time<\/a>. \u201cAs we will explain, Plaintiffs have shown that Maryland\u2019s handgun-licensure law regulates a course of conduct protected by the Second Amendment, and Maryland has not established that the law is consistent with our Nation\u2019s historical tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n

The state appealed, however, and the Fourth Circuit reversed the panel\u2019s decision en banc\u00a0last August<\/a>. That panel ruled Maryland\u2019s law was presumptively constitutional after the Supreme Court blessed certain kinds of carry permits in the\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/em>decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the Supreme Court issued Bruen, courts across the country have struggled to answer the many questions resulting from the Court\u2019s new analytical framework,\u201d Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote for the majority. \u201cBut this uncertainty does not extend to \u2018shall-issue\u2019 licensing laws, which the Supreme Court has indicated should not be cast aside in rote fashion by relying on Bruen\u2019s invalidation of \u2018may-issue\u2019 licensing laws. We are not free to ignore the Supreme Court\u2019s clear guidance on the presumptive constitutionality of \u2018shall-issue\u2019 licensing regimes, nor to unduly constrain legislatures seeking to employ such measures to prevent handgun misuse and violent criminal activity. So, in line with the Court\u2019s \u2018shall-issue\u2019 discussion, governments may continue to enforce \u2018shall-issue\u2019 firearms licensing regulations that impose nonabusive, objective requirements like background checks and firearm safety training.\u201d<\/p>\n

That decision now stands unless and until the Supreme Court addresses permit-to-purchase laws in a future case.\u00a0Maryland Shall Issue acknowledged the court defeat but promised to continue fighting the permitting scheme.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith respect to the [Handgun Qualification License] case, that is the end of the road for this particular case, but it is far from the final word on the issue,\u201d the\u00a0group wrote on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the\u00a0Jennings<\/em>\u00a0petition concerned Delaware\u2019s 2022 sales ban on AR-15s and similar rifles, as well as magazines capable of holding more than 17 rounds of ammunition. It arose after the Third Circuit Court of Appeals panel agreed with a district court judge and denied an attempt by gun-rights groups to secure a preliminary injunction\u00a0blocking those bans last July<\/a>. The panel wrote that even if a litigant shows they are likely to succeed on legal claims that the government has violated their constitutional rights, a court does not have to issue an injunction blocking the law in question. That decision will now stand and could impact future gun-rights challenges in states covered under the Third Circuit\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

Aside from the previously mentioned cases, the Court also took a familiar course of action against a fifth pending Second Amendment petition. The justices granted, vacated, and remanded (GVR) the case\u00a0<\/span>Dubois v. United States<\/span><\/a><\/em>, a challenge to the federal gun ban for convicted felons, back down to the Eleventh Circuit to\u00a0<\/span>be reconsidered<\/span>\u00a0with the High Court\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>US v. Rahimi<\/span><\/em>\u00a0decision in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

That marks a continuation of the Court\u2019s practice of GVR\u2019ing felony gun ban cases for violent and non-violent felons alike, even as questions of the law\u2019s legality\u00a0continue to split lower appellate courts<\/a>\u00a0and previously GVR\u2019d decisions\u00a0return unchanged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCOTUS Rejects Multiple Second Amendment Cases, Relists Gun Ban Challenges On a day when gun-rights advocates hoped that the Supreme Court would announce its next big Second Amendment case, it only informed them which ones it was turning away. On Monday, the High Court denied petitions for certiorari in\u00a0Maryland Shall Issue v. Moore\u00a0and\u00a0Gray v. Jennings. … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=106753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106754,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106753\/revisions\/106754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=106753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=106753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=106753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}