The Supreme Court granted, vacated, and remanded multiple cases back to the lower courts in Monday morning’s orders list, but the five cases dealing with bans on guns and magazines weren’t among them. Neither were the five cases challenging age-based prohibitions on sales and carrying, even though the Court had kept those cases in limbo for several months before listing them for last week’s conference.
Even more perplexing is the fact that the Court did take action on several cases that the justices have been hanging on to that address gun bans for “unlawful” users of drugs. In U.S. v. Sam and U.S. v Daniels, the Court denied the government’s cert petitions, which leaves the Fifth Circuit decisions throwing out the defendants’ charges of being “unlawful” drug users in possession of a firearm intact.
The Court also GVR’ed U.S. v. Erik Harris; a Third Circuit case that also deals with Section 922(g)(3). Harris was convicted under § 922(g)(3) based solely on hisp olice interview admission to smoking marijuana once every three days, according to his cert petition.
That conviction should be overturned thanks to what the Court said in Hemani, and in light of the justices rejecting outright two other 922(g)(3) cases where the appellate courts had already cleared the defendants of criminal charges merely for using marijuana and owning guns at the same time.
But if the justices were ready to address these 922(g)(3) cases in Monday morning’s orders list, why not the hardware bans and the age-related cases? And what happens next?
Honestly, we have no way of knowing for sure, though I suspect we won’t be waiting too long to find out. The Supreme Court will likely release several miscellaneous orders throughout the week, and the ten 2A-related cases could get denied, granted, or GVRed at any time. It’s also possible that the Court has decided to hold these cases over until the fall term, when they’ll once again be considered in conference.
That kind of makes sense with the hardware cases, since the Court (and the rest of us) are waiting on the Third Circuit’s en banc opinion about New Jersey’s gun and magazine ban to be released. It’s widely expected that the appellate court will reject the prohibitions, which would set up a circuit court split on the issue and give SCOTUS even more reason to accept one or more of these challenges.
We already have a circuit court split on the issue of under-21s and their Second Amendment rights, though, and I’m struggling to make sense of the Court’s silence on cases like NRA v. Glass, McCoy v. ATF, and Lara v. Paris. I expected to see those cases GVRed back to the lower courts in light of Hemani and Wolford, and I guess that’s still a possibility, but I don’t know why the justices decided not to include those cases in the orders from last week’s conference that were released on Monday morning.
If anything, I’d say the fact that the hardware and under-21 cases received the SCOTUS silent treatment this morning makes it less likely that they’ll be denied outright. If that were going to happen I would think that the justices could have disposed of them in the regular orders list.
This is legitimately surprising. When they finally got listed after Hemani, seemed like a GVR lock. https://t.co/AhcSzveuU7
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) June 29, 2026
Yeah, I figured we’d get some kind of resolution this morning, even if the Court resolved to just kick these issues back down to the appellate courts. We may still get GVRs in all of these cases, but I’m getting a little more optimistic that the justices will hang on to the hardware cases over the summer break and revisit them in the fall.
Oh boy y’all. NO GVR on the five gun/mag ban cases. I thought for sure Wolford had guaranteed it. Unless they throw something into a misc. order between now and July 3, we’re getting held over the summer. HUGE.
— Hannah Hill (@hannahhill_sc) June 29, 2026
My biggest nagging doubt is the fact that they’ve also not taken any action on the cases addressing 2A rights for young adults, and there’s nothing really percolating in the lower courts that would cause them to hang on to those cases too.
At the very least, these ten cases live on to fight another day… for the moment, anyway. What ultimately happens with them is anyone’s guess at the moment, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and my hopes up that the Court will keep ahold of all of them while the justices enjoy their summer vacation, and return to these issues in the fall with quick cert grants.
Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
Help us continue to report on their efforts and legislative successes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Read the full article here
