Second Amendment Roundup: 18 to 20 Age Ban Cases Coming to a Head
On March 10, the respondents in the successful challenge to Minnesota’s ban on issuance of pistol carry permits to persons aged 18 to 20, Jacobson v. Worth, agreed with the state petitioner that the Supreme Court should grant certiorari in the case. The Commissioner of the Department of Public Safety, the petitioner, asked the Court to grant, vacate, and remand (GVR) the case and in the alternative to resolve it on the merits. I previously analyzed the Eighth Circuit’s reasoning in finding the exclusion of persons in the 18-20 age group to violate the Second Amendment here.
Days later, on March 14, the Eleventh Circuit issued its long-awaited en banc decision in National Rifle Association v. Bondi, upholding Florida’s prohibition on purchase of a firearm by persons aged 18 to 20. That followed the Fifth Circuit’s holding in Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on January 30 that the federal restriction on handgun sales to persons under 21 violates the Second Amendment (see my post here). On the same date, that same issue was also argued in the Fourth Circuit in Brown v. ATF.
The Eighth Circuit in Jacobson was the first federal court of appeals to resolve a Second Amendment case following the Supreme Court’s decision in Rahimi, which upheld the federal ban on possession of firearms by a person subject to a court order finding him to be a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner. The court held that Minnesota failed to support its claim that 18 to 20-year-olds are a danger to the public. Contrast that with Rahimi, which repeatedly emphasized that the law at issue “applies only once a court has found that the defendant ‘represents a credible threat to the physical safety’ of another.” The statistics applicable to the subject age group did not show that an 18-year-old, in Rahimi‘s words, “poses a clear threat of physical violence to another.” Unlike the Minnesota law, the statute in Rahimi did “not broadly restrict arms use by the public generally.”
Despite the Jacobson court’s extensive analysis of Rahimi, the cert petition asks the Supreme Court to GVR the case because “instead of inviting supplemental briefing regarding the impact of Rahimi or remanding to the district court to conduct that analysis, the Eighth Circuit simply added Rahimi ornamentation to the Bruen-based opinion it had drafted.” It argues that the Court should treat Jacobson the same as the several others that it GVRed for reconsideration in light of Rahimi. But all of those cases were decided before Rahimi. And again, Jacobson took full account of Rahimi.
Alternatively, the cert petition argues that the circuit conflict warrants the Court’s plenary review. It claims that the “robust evidentiary record of historical principles and empirical data supports the constitutionality” of the statute based on two expert reports. Both turn out to be two of the most prominent suspects in an
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