MONTGOMERY, Ala. — On a busy Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court, the nation’s highest judicial body turned down the opportunity to hear a Second-Amendment-based challenge to a California gun law. California passed a law effectively prohibiting certain residents from conceal carry of firearms outside of their homes, and Alabama joined the charge to have the Supreme Court overturn it.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R-Ala.) was frustrated with the court’s refusal to take up the issue. “It is patently absurd to believe that the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms is confined to the four walls of their places of residence, yet that is effectively the view that the Supreme Court endorsed today in its decision to let stand a California federal court decision upholding a ban of the carry of firearms in public in San Diego County,” he said in a press release.
The decision to decline the case, Peruta v. California, was not unanimous. Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch both dissented and noted that the Second Amendment is becoming a disfavored right.
“Even if other members of the Court do not agree that the Second Amendment likely protects a right to public carry, the time has come for the Court to answer this important question definitively,” Justice Thomas wrote. “Twenty-six States have asked us to resolve the question presented, see Brief for Alabama et al. as Amici Curiae, and the lower courts have fully vetted the issue.”
Alabama’s brief in favor of a court review was joined by Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. In the absence of a Supreme Court hearing, the Ninth Circuit’s decision upholding the ban will stand.
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