The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a major new Second Amendment dispute, agreeing to use a New York case to decide whether the government must let people carry a handgun in public for self-defense purposes.
With the nation reeling from series of mass shootings, the justices said they will hear an appeal by a New York gun-rights group and two people who say the state is violating their constitutional rights by issuing carry licenses only to those who can show a special need for protection.
The high court hasn’t issued a major gun-rights decision in more than a decade. Gun-rights advocates have been looking to the three justices appointed by former President Donald Trump to show a more assertive stance toward the Second Amendment.
The case, which the court will consider in the nine-month term that starts in October, will put the justices in the middle of one of the country’s most fractious debates. It will pit people who see public gun possession as a matter of self-defense and individual freedom against others who say the result will be more crime and reduced public safety.
New York is one of eight states—along with California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii—that the National Rifle Association says prevent most people from getting a carry license. Illinois and the District of Columbia also had sharp restrictions before their laws were invalidated in court.
The restrictions have created a split among federal appeals courts, a dynamic that often prompts the Supreme Court to intervene. The high court has never said whether the Second Amendment applies outside the home. It agreed to take up the new case after a month of internal deliberations.
‘Pressing’ issue
The appeal by the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and residents Robert Nash and Brandon Koch urged the court to clear up the disagreement.
“There is no Second Amendment issue more pressing than whether the fundamental, individual right to self-defense is confined to the home,” the group argued. “A minority of jurisdictions seem determined to control the very people and rights that the Second Amendment promises ‘shall not be infringed.’”
The high court has been largely silent on the subject of gun rights since 2010, when it said the Second Amendment applies to states and cities, along with the federal government and the District of Columbia. That followed a 2008 ruling that for the first time said people have a constitutional right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense purposes.
New York officials urged the Supreme Court to reject the appeal.
The New York law “has existed in the same essential form since 1913 and descends from a long Anglo-American tradition of regulating the carrying of firearms in public,” Attorney General Letitia James argued in court papers.
The San Francisco-based federal appeals court recently upheld Hawaii’s permit regulations on a 7-4 vote in an opinion written by Republican-appointed Judge Jay Bybee.
The case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett, 20-843.