The Supreme Court on Wednesday decided to leave in place an appeals court ruling that allows New York to keep its new gun control law while a legal challenge plays out.
Justices kept a hold on a federal judge’s ruling that invalidated various parts of the most recently passed Concealed Carry Improvement Act. The decision comes just one week after Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James asked the justices to allow the law to remain in place while legal challenges unfold in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
The decision signals that the high court is waiting to intervene in the case as lower courts interpret its June ruling, which found that New York’s old concealed carry permit regime was unconstitutional and forced state legislators to adopt new laws in accordance with the Second Amendment.
SUPREME COURT ASKED TO INTERVENE IN LEGAL FIGHT OVER NEW YORK GUN LAW
There were no public dissenting votes over the decision, but Republican-appointed Justice Samuel Alito said in a statement attached to the brief order, which Justice Clarence Thomas joined, that the decision is not “expressing any view on the merits of the case” and the challengers “should not be deterred.”
Thomas was the author of the opinion in June last year that said the constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.”
In a Nov. 7 decision, U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby struck down a number of provisions of the act, which was passed in response to Thomas’s ruling.
Such measures that Suddaby nixed included one that bans firearms in a range of “sensitive locations” such as parks, entertainment venues, medical facilities, houses of worship, and other places where people congregate in public. Suddaby also blocked a provision that requires gun owners to show “good moral character” in order to obtain a license, and another that Suddaby said was a sweeping ban on firearms on private property open to the public.
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The lawsuit was brought by Ivan Antonyuk and five other plaintiffs who argued they have a right to carry firearms outside the home. They challenged measures of the act, including its provisions requiring applicants to provide character references and contact information of family members, including information about their social media accounts.
Since the act was enacted in September, several other lawsuits have emerged in three federal district courts ruling in favor of the plaintiffs in each case. The 2nd Circuit allowed the law to remain in place in its entirety pending appeals.
