{"id":89092,"date":"2023-01-05T15:47:37","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T21:47:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=89092"},"modified":"2023-01-05T15:47:37","modified_gmt":"2023-01-05T21:47:37","slug":"89092","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=89092","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

New York AG\u2019s Emergency SCOTUS Bid to Preserve Concealed Carry Law Could Mark Showdown Between Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh<\/a><\/p>\n

New York State Attorney General\u00a0Letitia James\u00a0<\/strong>(D) asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to keep its new\u00a0Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA)<\/a>\u00a0in effect while a lawsuit works its way through the courts. The\u00a0emergency filing<\/a>\u00a0marks the justices\u2019 first chance to decide a major Second Amendment dispute since it ruled last summer in\u00a0New York State Rifle v. Bruen<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2022 statute was the result of the state legislature\u2019s emergency session which immediately followed the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in Bruen. The case had been a successful challenge to New York\u2019s century-old handgun licensing regime. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the Court\u2019s opinion that the statute was an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment that unduly interfered with New Yorkers\u2019 \u201cspecial need for self-defense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas also noted in his opinion that gun laws must be \u201cconsistent with this Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s legislative response to the Bruen ruling made it a felony to possess a gun in \u201csensitive areas\u201d \u2014 such as museums, stadiums, public transit systems, parks, Times Square and houses of worship \u2014 as well as \u201crestricted areas,\u201d such as private property. The CCIA also added training requirements for concealed-carry permits, as well as a mandated written exam, in-person screening, and a review of social media accounts to ensure a licensee\u2019s \u201cgood moral character\u201d before licensing<\/p>\n

After it was passed, the CCIA came under immediate attack by gun activists in multiple lawsuits.<\/p>\n

In one such\u00a0case<\/a>, U.S. District Judge\u00a0Glenn T. Suddaby<\/strong>, a\u00a0George W. Bush\u00a0<\/strong>appointee,\u00a0temporarily blocked<\/a>\u00a0the \u201csensitive places\u201d and \u201cgood moral character\u201d portions of the law on the grounds that analogous regulations did not exist in the 18th and 19th century. James successfully appealed that ruling.<\/p>\n

A three-judge panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit next ruled unanimously to stay Suddaby\u2019s order pending the outcome of New York\u2019s appeal and ordered expedited consideration of the case with a Jan. 9, 2023, deadline for briefs.<\/p>\n

The panel, which consisted of Circuit Judges Robert D. Sack, a Bill Clinton appointee; Richard C. Wesley, a George W. Bush appointee; and Joseph F. Bianco, a Donald Trump appointee, is the same trio that stayed another district court order in a separate challenge to the CCIA in December.<\/p>\n

The gun owners responded with an emergency petition to the Supreme Court on Dec. 21, 2022, in which they asked the justices to keep the district court ruling in effect while the underlying challenge to the CCIA works its way through the appeal.<\/p>\n

In a 43-page responsive brief, James urges the justices to refrain from taking the \u201cextraordinary step\u201d of vacating a circuit court order. In particular, James pointed to the timing of the question before the high court.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis Court ordinarily awaits percolation of legal issues in the lower courts before granting review and would benefit from such percolation here,\u201d the AG\u2019s brief states.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Arguing that the CCIA was crafted with the Court\u2019s Bruen ruling in mind, James quoted Justice Brett Kavanaugh\u2018s concurrence in support of the Empire State\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

\u201cBruen cautioned that its standard was not intended to be a \u2018regulatory straightjacket,’\u201d James reminded the justices, quoting Kavanaugh\u2019s words. On the issue of the now oft-quoted Thomas standard, \u201cthis Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation,\u201d James again raised Kavanaugh\u2019s comments: \u201cgovernments were not required to identify \u2018historical twin[s]\u2019 or \u2018dead ringer[s]\u2019 to support modern regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The argument pits Thomas\u2019s demands from the Court\u2019s majority opinion against Kavanaugh\u2019s assurances in his concurrence. Potentially, the justices could use the case to tease out nuances in the Court\u2019s Second Amendment jurisprudence. Perhaps more likely, however, the potential for conflict could be a factor that dissuades the justices from reviewing the Second Circuit\u2019s ruling at all.<\/p>\n

James\u2019 brief also called Suddaby\u2019s underlying analysis \u201cdeeply flawed,\u201d particularly on the issue of standing. James argued that the district judge was wrong to allow a person who had never applied for a carry license to challenge the carry-licensing law and to allow a church drug counselor to challenge prohibitions on guns in drug-treatment clinics.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, New York argues, Suddaby got the history wrong by relying on the plaintiffs\u2019 \u201cinvented metrics of relevancy and representativeness, speculative hypotheticals, and an improper demand that respondents identify examples of historical regulations that are both numerous and identical to the challenged provisions of the CCIA.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the substantive errors, New York\u2019s petition also makes several procedural arguments against a Supreme Court reversal of the Second Circuit\u2019s stay. It argues that it is the wrong time for the justices to involve themselves given that the case is still at an intermediate stage. Moreover, it says, Suddaby\u2019s stay \u201cwas necessary to prevent regulatory chaos and public confusion,\u201d which was created by multiple legal challenges to the same statute proceeding at the same time.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the Bruen case with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all joining Thomas\u2019 opinion. Roberts also joined Kavanaugh\u2019s concurrence. In dissent stood Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. As the justice designated for the Second Circuit, Sotomayor is the justice before whom the emergency application will proceed; the justice could rule on or reject the matter unilaterally, or could refer it to the full Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New York AG\u2019s Emergency SCOTUS Bid to Preserve Concealed Carry Law Could Mark Showdown Between Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh New York State Attorney General\u00a0Letitia James\u00a0(D) asked the Supreme Court Tuesday to keep its new\u00a0Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA)\u00a0in effect while a lawsuit works its way through the courts. The\u00a0emergency filing\u00a0marks the justices\u2019 first chance … 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-89092","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\/89092","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=89092"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89093,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89092\/revisions\/89093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}