{"id":90909,"date":"2023-03-18T09:13:05","date_gmt":"2023-03-18T14:13:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=90909"},"modified":"2023-03-18T09:13:05","modified_gmt":"2023-03-18T14:13:05","slug":"90909","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=90909","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Falls pastor may be headed to U.S. Supreme Court over New York gun law<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a case that has already made its way to the United States Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s likely to return there.<\/p>\n

But first, Niagara Falls pastor Jimmie Hardaway Jr.\u2019s constitutional challenge to New York\u2019s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) faces a Monday morning hearing before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The New York City-based court is widely considered one of the most influential appeals courts in the nation.<\/p>\n

Hardaway, of Trinity Baptist Church, and Rev. Larry Boyd, pastor of Open Praise Full Gospel Baptist Church in Buffalo, challenged the constitutionality of the CCIA, along with two national pro-gun groups, Las Vegas-based Firearms Policy Coalition and Bellevue, Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. The suit sought to block a provision of the CCIA that bars individuals from bringing firearms into places of worship.<\/p>\n

Boyd and Hardaway also sought to have the CCIA struck down in its entirety as unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

Hardaway and Boyd have argued in the case that they would suffer irreparable harm, and that their Second Amendment rights would be violated, if the places of worship restriction was not blocked. In an affidavit accompanying the original lawsuit, Hardaway acknowledges that he is a member of the two pro-gun groups involved in the case and that he is licensed to carry a handgun in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrior to the enactment and enforcement of the Place of Worship Ban, I would consistently carry a firearm on Trinity Baptist Church\u2019s premises,\u201d Hardaway said in the affidavit. \u201cI would intend to keep carrying for self-defense and to keep the peace at Trinity Baptist Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. District Court Judge John L. Sinatra Jr. conducted an expedited hearing on Hardaway and Boyd\u2019s lawsuit and, just hours after oral arguments in the case, issued a 40-page decision and order that granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) blocking the enforcement of the places of worship restriction.<\/p>\n

New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office defended the CCIA, had sought to remove Sinatra, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, charging that Hardaway and Boyd had engaged in \u201cjudge shopping\u201d by having the case directed to Sinatra.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, in a decision and order that followed almost word-for-word and page-for-page his decision on the TRO, Sinatra granted the pastors a preliminary injunction that blocked the enforcement of the places of worship restriction. Weeks later, Sinatra ruled the entire CCIA was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

James appealed Sinatra\u2019s decisions to the Second Circuit and asked the appeals court to block his rulings while they considered them. The attorney general asked the appeals court to overturn, \u201cin each and every aspect,\u201d Sinatra\u2019s rulings.<\/p>\n

The Second Circuit judges issued a stay on Sinatra\u2019s decisions, which effectively reinstated the CCIA and the places of worship restriction.<\/p>\n

Hardaway and Boyd asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and overturn the stay. They argued that their rights under the Second Amendment had been \u201cindefinitely suspend(ed).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cApplicants, along with countless others like them, are being irreparably harmed each day this patently unconstitutional law remains in place, eviscerating the right of ordinary, law-abiding New Yorkers to carry firearms in public for self-defense,\u201d Hardaway and Boyd\u2019s lawyers told the high court. \u201cAdditionally, this case presents issues of national importance with respect to states that enact laws in explicit defiance of this court\u2019s decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January, the court, without any noted dissents, allowed the stay to remain in place while the Second Circuit proceedings continued.<\/p>\n

The appeals court panel will hear up to 20 minutes, 10 minutes for each side, of arguments in the case. The case has attracted friend of the court briefs from both pro-gun control and pro-gun rights groups, as well as the attorneys general from a dozen states opposed to the New York law.<\/p>\n

In his decision and order, Sinatra wrote that the State of New York had responded to the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen by enacting \u201ceven more restrictive legislation\u201d than what the high court had declared unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court reiterates that ample Supreme Court precedent addressing the individual\u2019s right to keep and bear arms \u2014 from Heller and McDonald to its June 2022 decision in Bruen \u2014 dictates that New York\u2019s new place of worship restriction is equally unconstitutional,\u201d Sinatra wrote.<\/p>\n

During oral arguments in the case, Sinatra appeared dismissive and openly hostile to the arguments being made by lawyers for the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Bruen, the (Supreme Court) made the Second Amendment test crystal clear: regulation in this area is permissible only if the government demonstrates that the regulation is consistent with the Nation\u2019s historical tradition,\u201d Sinatra wrote in his decisions. \u201cNew York fails that test. The State\u2019s exclusion is, instead, inconsistent with the Nation\u2019s historical traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hardaway has maintained that his church has an \u201copen-door policy\u201d that carries risk over \u201cwho will walk in the door for services.\u201d The pastor also claims that the \u201chorrific murders\u201d of nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, has \u201cstiffened (his) resolve to carry for self-defense and to keep the peace at Trinity Baptist strong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Falls pastor may be headed to U.S. Supreme Court over New York gun law It\u2019s a case that has already made its way to the United States Supreme Court. And it\u2019s likely to return there. But first, Niagara Falls pastor Jimmie Hardaway Jr.\u2019s constitutional challenge to New York\u2019s Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA) faces a … 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-90909","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\/90909","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=90909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90910,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90909\/revisions\/90910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}