The issue of whether adults under the age of 21 can be denied their right to possess, purchase, or carry a firearm has been percolating in the lower courts for several years now, and multiple cases are now on the cusp of being considered in conference by the Supreme Court.
In May, the National Rifle Association filed a cert petition in NRA v. Glass; a challenge to Florida’s ban on gun sales to adults under the age of 21. Florida’s reply is due on July 21, but Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has stated he doesn’t plan on defending the law, so I’ll be interesting to see what his reply brief says.
The state of Pennsylvania filed its cert petition in Paris v. SAF last week, with Attorney General asking the Court to consider if “firearms laws imposing a minimum age of 21 violate the purported Second Amendment rights of 18-to-20-year-olds?” That case deals with the state’s ban on both concealed carry for under-21s and a prohibition on open carry during a state of emergency which, taken together, deprives young adults of the ability to bear arms at all while a declared emergency is in effect.
There’s also the recently decided Brown v. ATF and McCoy v. ATF cases, in which the Fourth Circuit held that restrictions on under-21s don’t violate the Second Amendment; and ATF v. Reese, in which the Fifth Circuit held that the same federal laws in question are an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.
Brown and McCoy will be petitioned to the Court within a few weeks, but the Washington Post has reported a surprising twist in the Reese case.
The Justice Department, which defended the federal sales ban in both cases, declined to comment. The cases resolved by the 4th and 5th circuits originated during Biden’s term. Harding said the Justice Department appears to have dropped its efforts to defend the law since Trump took office in January. The department faced a June 27 deadline to seek Supreme Court review of the 5th Circuit ruling but did not do so, he said.
The DOJ declined to comment to my inquiry about whether or not a cert petition was filed in Reese as well.
This is a very interesting development. Under the Biden administration, the DOJ argued that a ban on the purchase of handguns from FFLs doesn’t infringe on the Second Amendment, and that 18-to-20-year-olds are not among “the people” protected by the right in the first place.
The Fifth Circuit rejected both of those arguments, and now it appears the Trump administration does too.
The DOJ has continued to seek Supreme Court review in some cases under Attorney General Pam Bondi. The Solicitor General has filed five cert petitions in cases involving the federal statute that prohibits the possession of firearms by anyone who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”
But the DOJ also declined to file a response in Rush v. U.S., which addresses whether the Second Amendment protects the right to “possess unregistered short-barreled rifles that are in common use for lawful purposes.” It also declined to appeal the Third Circuit’s decision in Range, in which the appellate court held that a Pennsylvania man convicted of a misdemeanor crime of falsifying his income on a food stamp application decades ago should not be deprived of his right to keep and bear arms. And now it appears the DOJ won’t appeal the Fifth Circuit decision that held that young adults like Caleb Reese should be able to purchase a handgun and handgun ammunition at FFLs throughout the country.
So what happens if the Supreme Court grants cert to one or more of these cases and DOJ declines to defend the statutes in question? The Court has the option of appointing an outside party to defend the law, and anti-gun AGs in California, New Jersey, New York, and other blue states would be more than happy to step in if given the opportunity (along with attorneys for anti-2A groups like Everytown). These cases will all be waiting for the justices when they return from their summer recess, but that doesn’t mean they’ll grant cert soon after… or at all. Hopefully this isn’t another issue SCOTUS will sit on for “another term or two”, especially since there’s already a split in the lower courts that can’t be resolved without the justices weighing in.
Read the full article here
