The Second Amendment Returns to SCOTUS

By Clark Neily Clark Neily

Based on today’s argument in New York Rifle & Pistol Association, the unconstitutionality of New York City’s obscure transportation restriction on licensed handguns seems to be a foregone conclusion, with the only real question being how the Supreme Court will respond to the City’s strategic attempt to moot the case by repealing the law before a ruling could be handed down.

On that question, the justices appear divided along predictable ideological lines, with Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor taking a hard line in their questioning that the case is moot, and Justices Alito and Gorsuch pushing back with equal force for the proposition that the controversy remains live and the city should not be rewarded for its blatant efforts to frustrate Supreme Court review of its now abandoned policy.

The mootness issue is particularly significant in this case because it involves such a clear attempt by a government litigant to obtain favorable rulings in the lower courts (which have been generally—but not uniformly—supportive of gun regulations in Second Amendment challenges) while denying the Supreme Court the opportunity to reverse those rulings and order the lower courts to stop rubber-stamping gun regulations and apply a more searching level of judicial scrutiny.

Notably, the …Read the Rest

Source:: Cato Institute