CGF Statement on Supreme Court Denial of Review in Second Amendment Challenge to California’s 10-Day Waiting Period Laws

WASHINGTON, D.C. (February 20, 2018)­­­­­­ — The Calguns Foundation has issued the following statement regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to not review a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld California’s 10-day waiting period for existing gun owners who pass a background check:

We are disappointed, but not entirely surprised, that the Court has once again decided against taking up a Second Amendment challenge to plainly unconstitutional laws.

In his important 14-page dissent from the Court’s denial of certiorari, Justice Clarence Thomas detailed why the Ninth Circuit applied an improper “deferential analysis” that was “indistinguishable from rational-basis review,” showing “the lower courts’ general failure to afford the Second Amendment the respect due an enumerated constitutional right.”

We agree with Justice Thomas that the Ninth Circuit’s “double standard is apparent from other cases,” like one where it invalidated an Arizona law partly because it “delayed” women seeking an abortion, and another where it struck down a Washington county’s 5-day waiting period for adult dancing licenses because it “unreasonably prevent[ed] a dancer from exercising first amendment rights while an application [was] pending.”

As Justice Thomas explained, the “Ninth Circuit would not have done this for any other constitutional right, and it could not have done this unless it was applying rational-basis review.” He is, of course, correct—just as we have maintained throughout the course of this appeal and in our briefing to the Supreme Court. But in the Ninth Circuit, it appears, “rights that have no basis in the Constitution receive greater protection than the Second Amendment, which is enumerated in the text.”

From the bottom of our hearts, we wish to thank every single supporter who generously helped us litigate this long-running case through trial and up to the Supreme Court. We also want to thank amici Cato Institute, Crime Prevention Research Center, Firearms Policy Coalition, Madison Society Foundation, Gun Owners of California, and Firearms Policy Foundation for their excellent briefs in support of our case and the cause of individual liberty.

The Calguns Foundation will continue to challenge unconstitutional gun control laws until the Second Amendment takes its place as a peer among fundamental rights, like those in the First Amendment, rather than the “constitutional orphan” and “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees” that it is in the Ninth Circuit today.

A copy of Justice Thomas’s dissent and all Supreme Court filings in Silvester v. Becerra can be viewed or downloaded at https://www.calgunsfoundation.org/silvester.

The Calguns Foundation (www.calgunsfoundation.org) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that serves its members, supporters, and the public through educational, cultural, and judicial efforts to advance Second Amendment and related civil rights.