Gun rights groups filed a lawsuit against a California gun law that aims to emulate a Texas abortion law by allowing private citizens to sue the makers and distributors of guns that are banned in the Golden State.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) criticized the Texas law in July when he signed Senate Bill 1327, a measure aimed at cracking down on sales of illegal firearms and a move that explicitly aimed to rebuke the Texas law and the Supreme Court‘s summer decision to allow states to impose laws severely restricting abortion access.
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The lawsuit filed Monday targets another provision of the California law, modeled on the Texas law, that requires those challenging the state’s gun laws to pay legal fees if the challenge fails.
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Under the novel California law, attorneys and plaintiffs seeking to challenge the state’s firearms restrictions are “jointly and severally liable to pay the attorney’s fees and costs of the prevailing party,” according to Section 1021.11 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
Groups challenging Newsom’s measure include the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation, firearms dealer Gunfighter Tactical, and the San Diego Gun Owners PAC. Their lawsuit alleges that the statute regarding legal fees is against the Constitution and that it “seeks to suppress firearms-related litigation.”
Although the lawsuit does not explicitly dispute the private lawsuit portion of the California law, it aims to challenge a similar feature of the Golden State’s law and Texas’s abortion measure, which also asks challengers to pay legal fees.
The requirement to pay the fees of defending parties was the subject of critique by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta previously filed an amicus brief critiquing the same provision in Texas.
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“Section 1021.11 is not even rationally related to any legitimate government interest and therefore would fail even rational basis review,” the complaint goes on to argue. “As noted above, SB 1327 was apparently adopted in retaliation for Texas’s SB 8 in connection with abortion statutes. Retaliation is not a rational justification for the classifications in this case and, indeed, is an utterly impermissible justification.”
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
