Gun control laws fall at dizzying pace after Supreme Court ruling

A New York gun control law that prohibits firearms in Times Square, Yankee Stadium, the subway and other sensitive places is on shaky legal ground after a judge found these provisions violate the Second Amendment, though the ruling is paused while the case is appealed.

The ongoing court battle over New York’s gun control measure is just one part of a shifting legal landscape resulting from the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court’s expansion of the Second Amendment in a June ruling, which has led lower courts to block or strike down gun control measures at a dizzying pace.

Since the justices’ decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen this summer, judges in various parts of the country have said it’s unconstitutional to ban guns that lack serial numbers, to prevent people under felony indictment from buying guns and to prohibit guns from airports and even summer camp.

“In the immediate aftermath, we’ve got a half a dozen courts who are striking down laws based on this decision,” said Jake Charles, a professor at the Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law. “I think it’s going to be shocking to people when we see the fallout from Bruen in the first six months.”

The Supreme Court’s prior term was dominated by the Republican-appointed justices’ overruling of Roe v. Wade. But the court’s aggressive pursuit of other conservative agenda items, like expanding the Second Amendment, is now coming into sharper focus as lower courts wrestle with the gun-rights decision’s implications.

The majority opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas interpreted the Second Amendment as broadly protecting the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense. At the same time, the decision reaffirmed that gun rights can be lawfully limited — namely, by gun control measures rooted in the “nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

But the court’s “historical tradition” test has been roundly criticized as vague and offering little help to judges who are not trained historians. The Bruen test also eliminated the formal requirement that judges weigh whether or not a challenged law is effective at preventing gun violence, which could undermine public safety.

“The Supreme Court has adopted a test that’s going to make it hard to justify a lot of gun safety laws, including uncontroversial ones like background checks or bans on domestic abusers having access to firearms,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Second Amendment expert.

One area of Second Amendment ambiguity that was tested in the New York case deals with so-called “sensitive places,” areas where the Supreme Court said guns could be lawfully prohibited, even as the justices left that term largely undefined.

In response to the Supreme Court’s late June ruling, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on July 1 signed a law that criminalized the carrying of guns in airports, houses of worship, Times Square and other sensitive places, and imposed heightened licensing requirements. This prompted a swift legal challenge from the group Gun Owners of America.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Syracuse ruled for the gun-rights group, temporarily blocking key parts of New York law, known as the Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA). In a 53-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby said some of the law’s heightened licensing requirements and location-specific bans — including the prohibition of guns in Times Square — went too far.

The plaintiff in the case, Gun Owners of America, hailed the ruling.

“Anti-gunners like Kathy Hochul and [New York City Mayor] Eric Adams lied and misrepresented the Second Amendment to the courts, putting New Yorkers at a great disadvantage in the midst of rising crime,” Erich Pratt, the group’s senior vice president, said at the time. “We are grateful to Judge Suddaby for his quick action to restore the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”

Suddaby, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, ordered New York officials to halt enforcement of the provisions at issue. But he delayed his decision from taking effect, allowing state officials to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, which has since halted Suddaby’s ruling while the case plays out there.

Suddaby said New York officials had justified only some of the law’s new limits on constitutional grounds, while failing to adequately defend others.

Specifically, the judge maintained provisions that restricted guns from property that is owned or temporarily restricted by the government; polling places; houses of worship, with some exceptions; schools and public assemblies.

But he blocked gun bans in places of public transportation, summer camps, Times Square and entertainment venues such as theaters, stadiums, concerts and bars.

“Although this Court has found that most of the CCIA’s list of ‘sensitive locations’ violate the Constitution, the Court does so not because the list (or a portion of the list) must rise or fall in its entirety but because Defendants have simply not met their burden of sifting the historical materials for evidence to sustain New York State’s statute,” Suddaby wrote.

Hochul called the ruling “disappointing,” while vowing to do “everything in my power” to combat gun violence.

Second Amendment experts say a likely consequence of Bruen’s silence on key gun rights questions is that courts around the country will reach different conclusions about the law. For instance, it may be only a matter of time before the New York ruling comes into conflict with another federal judge’s different take on guns in “sensitive places.”

All of this means another big gun rights case could soon fall in the Supreme Court’s lap. 

“I originally thought, right after Bruen came down, that the Supreme Court was not going to take another Second Amendment case for a number of years, that it would let lower courts figure out how to apply this test and see how it shakes out,” said Charles, of Pepperdine University. “And now I’m becoming increasingly of the view that it will probably be almost forced to take a case sooner rather than later.”