A Fed Judge Again Finds New York Gun Law Unconstitutional

 

New York Needs to Stop taking the gun s away of Nyorkers afraid for their lives and
put in jail those that belong in jail including those with cases pending and those released to make room for the rats of the subways

By Jonah E. Bromwich

New york Times

A federal judge on Thursday blocked large portions of a new New York gun law, jeopardizing a measure that was passed just three months earlier and underscoring the difficulty that states may face in restricting the public carrying of firearms after a major Supreme Court ruling in June.

In a 53-page order, the judge, Glenn T. Suddaby of the Northern District, said he would block the state from enforcing several provisions, writing that New York’s attempts to bar guns in a number of places deemed “sensitive” — including museums, theaters, stadiums, Times Square, libraries, places offering services to children and anywhere alcohol is served — appeared impermissible. He based his decision on the June ruling, which struck down a restrictive law that had stood for more than a century.

The judge agreed to a three-business-day delay of his order, pending an emergency appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. That panel could take the issue up and grant a significantly longer stay. If it does not, the order will take effect.

The ruling dealt a sharp blow to New York, which had sought to provide a model for new gun legislation for the five other states whose laws were invalidated by the Supreme Court’s June ruling — in part by outlining how those “sensitive places,” were the court said it was permissible for states to bar guns, can be defined.

But the breadth and severity of Judge Suddaby’s decision illustrated how the justices had redrawn longstanding battle lines in the debate over the Second Amendment, giving a significant advantage to those who seek to carry guns in public and leaving many broad questions to be decided in lower courts.

“This opinion is a signal to all the states enacting gun laws that the chances of those laws surviving in court are slim,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in constitutional law and gun policy. “It’s really a signal that courts are prepared to strike down many more gun laws than ever before.”

He added: “A case like this, even if it’s not the final word, encourages people across the country to challenge gun laws in search of a similar victory.”

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Gun Violence in America

• 2022 Mass Shootings: Gun violence is a persistent American problem. A partial list of mass shootings this year offers a glimpse at the scope.
• N.Y. Gun Law: A federal judge blocked large portions of a new New York gun law, underscoring the difficulty that states may face in restricting the public carrying of firearms after a major Supreme Court ruling.
• Gun Deaths Rise: Homicides and suicides involving guns, which soared in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, continued rising in 2021, reaching the highest rates in three decades, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.
• A City Awash in Guns: Alarms have sounded about gun violence across the country over the past two years, but Philadelphia is one of the few major American cities where it truly is as bad as it has ever been.
• 
  

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New York authorities blasted Judge Suddaby’s ruling. In a statement, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that it was “deeply disappointing that the judge wants to limit my ability to keep New Yorkers safe and to prevent more senseless gun violence.” Mayor Eric Adams of New York City said that the order would make “it harder for us to protect New Yorkers.” And the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, pledged to appeal.

“Common-sense gun control regulations help save lives,” she said in a statement. “I will not back down from the fight to protect New Yorkers from repeated and baseless attacks on our state’s gun safety measures.” 

Erich Pratt, the senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, an organization to which all the plaintiffs belong, said in a statement that Ms. Hochul and Mr. Adams had “lied and misrepresented the Second Amendment to the courts, putting New Yorkers at a great disadvantage in the midst of rising crime.”

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If the Second Circuit does allow New York’s gun law to remain in place, a spokesman for Gun Owners of America said that the group would consider an immediate appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judge Suddaby’s order continued a trying year for New York as it has sought to maintain some of the country’s most restrictive gun regulations. In June, after the Supreme Court, in the case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, struck down the state’s century-old law barring most people from publicly carrying guns, the state passed a new measure in an emergency session in Albany. Lawmakers placed lengthy and elaborate restrictions on the public carry of weapons and included a long list of sensitive locations from which they would be barred entirely.

The law was almost immediately challenged by Ivan Antonyuk, a New Yorker and a member of Gun Owners of America, but was dismissed by Judge Suddaby, who found that Mr. Antonyuk alone did not have legal standing.

However, in that ruling, the judge made his opinion of the arguments themselves clear, in a section, he titled “substantial likelihood of success on the merits,” noting that several provisions of the new New York law were most likely impermissible.

Less than a month later, six members of Gun Owners of America, including Mr. Antonyuk, filed a new complaint. Judge Suddaby was ready with his ruling within little more than two weeks. He called the imposition of a “good moral character” test “fatally flawed.” He said of a requirement asking gun permit applicants to list three years’ worth of social media accounts: “No such circumstances exist under which this provision would be valid.”

He was particularly harsh in regard to New York’s list of sensitive locations. For the most part, Judge Suddaby found that many of those restrictions were likely to be impermissible. As mandated by the Supreme Court, his analysis depended primarily on comparing the new restrictions with laws that regulated guns in the 18th and 19th centuries; he found few laws that established precedents for barring guns in the places the state put off limits. 

“Bruen requires modern-day gun laws responding to modern-day problems to be evaluated on the basis of 18th- or 19th-century regulations, which were passed at the time that modern-day problems would have been unimaginable,” said Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who specializes in gun regulation. “This opinion shows how that approach might lead to outcomes that defy common sense.”

Andrew Willinger, the executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law in North Carolina, said that the historical analysis had been relatively limited; for example, he pointed toward Judge Suddaby’s remark that he could not find a historical statute that prohibited guns at “summer camps” — therefore, that restriction was blocked.

Judge Suddaby also took exception to part of the law that restricts the carrying of guns on private property unless the owner explicitly allows them to be carried, saying that there was no historical analogy.

He did let portions of the law stand, including the 18 hours of training required of permit applicants, and the barring of guns from government buildings, schools and places of worship.

But overall, Judge Suddaby, a former prosecutor who was appointed to the court in 2008 by President George W. Bush, said that since the Supreme Court ruling, it had not become easier to obtain a permit to carry guns in New York and that instead, the state had “entrenched itself as a shall-not-issue jurisdiction.” By doing so, he wrote, the state had “further reduced a first-class constitutional right” transforming it “into a mere request.”

Mr. Winkler said that he expected the Second Circuit to take up the case and to grant a stay.

“Generally, courts tend to grant stays to keep the law as it is at the time of litigation rather than changing the law temporarily, only to find that the original law was permissible,” he said.

Representatives for the Democratic majorities in the State Senate and Assembly said that they were reviewing the ruling. The State Senate’s Republican leader, Rob Ortt, called the decision “a victory for the constitutional rights of all New Yorkers.”

Grace Ashford contributed reporting.

Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney's office, state criminal courts in Manhattan, and New York City's jails. @jonesieman