The Supreme Court once again took no action on Monday on a challenge to Maryland’s ban on so-called assault weapons and a request to intervene and grant an injunction blocking Rhode Island from enforcing its prohibition on “large capacity” magazines while litigation proceeds to trial. Presumably the Snope and Ocean State Tactical cases will once again be re-listed for this week’s conference, which will take place on Friday, so we could potentially hear something on Monday, April 28th.
The justices did, however, turn away two more cases that implicate the right to bear arms today; another frustrating decision by the High Court when it comes to their continued reluctance to address continued abuses of our Second Amendment rights.
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Minnesota asking to revive the state’s ban on gun-carry permits for young adults.
The justices also left in place a ban n guns at the University of Michigan, declining to hear an appeal from a man who argued he has a right to be armed on campus. No justice noted a dissent in either case.
Taken together, the actions reflect the high court’s apparent lack of appetite for cases that further explore the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.”
The court has repeatedly turned away gun cases since its 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights and a clarifying 2024 decision that upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
The decision not to hear the Minnesota case was somewhat surprising because both sides sought the Supreme Court’s review and courts around the country have come to different conclusions about whether states can limit the gun rights of people aged 18 to 20 without violating the Constitution.
At this point, the Court’s inaction on 2A litigation is anything but surprising to those of us who’ve been impatiently waiting for the justices to wrestle with some important topics like bans on commonly-owned firearms, whether magazines are “arms” or accessories that aren’t protected by the Constitution, the scope of “gun-free zones”, and at what age our Second Amendment rights kick in.
The rejection of these particular cases means that Minnesota will have to move forward with allowing adults under the age of 21 to apply for and receive a concealed carry permit, despite the objections of the state’s anti-gun attorney general. That’s good news, though as the Associated Press noted, the plaintiffs in the Worth case also wanted to see the case accepted, given that a Supreme Court ruling upholding the lower courts’ decision would mean that under-21s in all 50 states would become eligible for a carry license in their state.
The decision not to hear the challenge to the University of Michigan’s carry ban, on the other hand, doesn’t really come with a silver lining. The sprawling campus of the university encompasses more than 3,000 acres in Ann Arbor, with another 10,000 acres under the university’s control. SCOTUS cautioned in Bruen that the state of New York couldn’t just declare the island of Manhattan a “sensitive place” where lawful carry is prohibited, but as two justices on the Michigan Supreme Court noted in their dissent to a decision upholding the ban a couple of years ago, broad swathes of Ann Arbor are off limits to gun owners because of the size and location of the campus and its many buildings.
Though SCOTUS declined to intervene at this stage, the plaintiff in the case could choose to re-file lawsuit in federal court. Joshua Wade originally challenged the university’s ban in state court in Michigan, and appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court after the state Supreme Court also declined his appeal last fall. Starting over in federal court, however, is going to be a lengthy and time-consuming process, and even if Wade does decide to move forward it will be several years before the university’s carry ban is once again subject to Supreme Court scrutiny.
If there’s any cause for optimism from today’s orders it’s that Snope and Ocean State Tactical have stuck around for yet another conference. If the Court was planning on just rejecting those cases outright I suspect the justices would have already done so. They’ve had plenty of changes since the cases were first heard in conference last December, so my guess is that they’re keeping them around for some reason, even if we don’t yet know why. I’d love to see SCOTUS grant cert to every case implicating our right to keep and bear arms that comes before them, but if the Court’s next 2A case is going to answer once and for all whether commonly-owned semi-automatic rifles are protected by the Second Amendment, that would be just fine with me… even if the waiting game is getting awfully old.
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