Federal Court Issues Flawed Decision Striking Down Missouri Gun Sanctuary Law

On Tuesday, federal district court Judge Brian Wimes issued an important ruling striking down Missouri’s Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA). SAPA is a “gun sanctuary” law that restricts state and law-enforcement cooperation with efforts to enforce federal gun control laws.

Gun sanctuary laws enacted by red states are in large part modeled on immigration sanctuary laws enacted by numerous blue states and localities, in order to limit state cooperation with enforcement of federal immigration laws. During the Trump Administration, the federal government lost numerous lawsuits challenging the legality of immigration sanctuaries (I went over those cases in detail in a Texas Law Review article, and a piece for the Washington Post). Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and several red states have decided to imitate the blue states’ success. Courts—including both liberal and conservative judges—were right to rule in favor of immigration sanctuaries, and Judge Wimes should have applied the same principles in the gun context, as well.

Judge Wimes correctly recognizes that “Missouri cannot be compelled to assist in the enforcement of federal regulations within the state.” Longstanding Supreme Court precedent holds that the federal government cannot “commandeer” state officials to help enforce federal law. That precedent played a key role in the Trump Administration’s defeats in various immigration sanctuary cases, most notably in the California “sanctuary state” case, which is closely analogous to the Missouri gun litigation. Judge Wimes could have saved himself a lot of time and effort by simply applying the same logic here.

Instead, the court concludes that SAPA violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution (which mandates that constitutionally authorized federal law is supreme over state law) because the Missouri law goes beyond merely refusing to help the feds and actually “regulate[s] federal law enforcement” and  “interfere[s] with its operations.” But, in reality, SAPA does no such thing. Its provisions merely impose constraints on state and local officials. To the extent that may not be true, Judge Wimes should have struck down applications of the law to federal officials, while leaving intact the constraints it imposes on state ones.

As evidence of the law’s regulation of federal officials, Judge Wimes cites Section 1.410, which states that some federal gun laws “exceed the powers granted to the federal government” and Section 1.420, which lists several types of federal gun regulations that “shall be considered infringements on the people’s right to keep and bear
arms, as guaranteed by Amendment II of the Constitution of the United States and
Article I, Section 23 of the Constitution of Missouri.” But neither of these sections actually imposes any commands on federal officials or restricts their activities in any way. Nothing here upsets the usual assumption that state laws are presumed to commands to state and local officials (or, in some cases, private citizens), not federal agencies.

Section 1.430 of SAPA specifically states that the federal gun regulations in question “shall be invalid to this state, shall not be recognized by this state, shall be specifically rejected by this state, and shall not be enforced by this state” (emphasis added). That clearly indicates the law is directed at the activities of Missouri state officials, not federal ones.

The closest SAPA comes to actually restricting federal officials is Section 1.450, which  says “[n]o entity or person, including any public officer or employee of this state or any political subdivision of this state, shall have the authority to enforce or attempt to enforce any federal acts, laws, executive orders, administrative orders, rules, regulations, statutes, or ordinances infringing on the right to keep and bear arms as described under section 1.420.” Read in the context of the rest of the law (which focuses on state and local governments), I think this language should be interpreted as constraining state and local officials. But even if “[n]o entity or person” encompasses federal officials, the fact remains that nothing in the act in any way penalizes or obstructs federal employees seeking to enforce the laws in question.

In addition, SAPA includes a severability provision