Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh criticized their colleagues on the Supreme Court for a failure to consider any cases regarding the Second Amendment over the last decade while welcoming several others examining various social issues during the same time.
“This Court would almost certainly review the constitutionality of a law requiring citizens to establish a justifiable need before exercising their free speech rights. And it seems highly unlikely that the Court would allow a State to enforce a law requiring a woman to provide a justifiable need before seeking an abortion,” Thomas wrote in an opinion joined by Kavanaugh. “But today, faced with a petition challenging just such a restriction on citizens’ Second Amendment rights, the Court simply looks the other way.”
The last cases the court heard relating to gun rights were McDonald v. Chicago and District of Columbia v. Heller. In April, the court decided against hearing a case regarding a defunct New York City gun law restricting the rights of an individual to carry a firearm outside the city limits.
On Monday, the court decided in a 6-3 ruling that gay, lesbian, and transgender people are included in protections granted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” Justice Neil Gorsuch, a President Trump appointee, wrote in his opinion.
Thomas, one of the most conservative judges in the court’s history, urged the body to consider a pending case regarding a New Jersey law that requires individuals seeking a permit to carry a handgun in public to show a “justifiable need” based on a special danger, according to the Washington Post.
“Petitioner asks this Court to grant certiorari to determine whether New Jersey’s near-total prohibition on carrying a firearm in public violates his Second Amendment right to bear arms, made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment,” Thomas said. “This case gives us the opportunity to provide guidance on the proper approach for evaluating Second Amendment claims; acknowledge that the Second Amendment protects the right to carry in public; and resolve a square Circuit split on the constitutionality of justifiable need restrictions on that right.”
