9th Circuit - "Good Cause" Requirement Unconstitutional

9th ? ... Aren't they the famous Left Wing Circuit ?

Oddly yes. They have a very bad track record of having their rulings overturned by SCOTUS.

That being said, I think this bodes well for us. The current SCOTUS should be inclined to side with bearing arms outside the home.
 
I was reading on cal guns, a poster on the site said the 9th district covers Hawaii too. Does this ruling only affect San Diego, or does it go to Hawaii? If it does, then that should get interesting since Hawaii has more B.S. laws than mass.
 
On an unrelated note, before I forget again, this has been bugging me for a while.... can someone tell me what Comm2A's logo is supposed to represent? [thinking]
 
9th ? ... Aren't they the famous Left Wing Circuit ?

It's more appropriate to think of the 9th by their nick-name - The "9th Circus". There are 29 active judges that when put into groups of three are capable of doing anything. They are the most over-turned circuit.

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I was reading on cal guns, a poster on the site said the 9th district covers Hawaii too. Does this ruling only affect San Diego, or does it go to Hawaii? If it does, then that should get interesting since Hawaii has more B.S. laws than mass.

The ruling would apply to the ENTIRE 9th circuit. But remember, the same panel also has under advisement two other similar, but different, RTC cases. We won't know the whole picture until those come out.
 
So if I read this correctly, and it were to hold up, this would mean that permitting agencies would more or less have to issue a permit to carry concealed despite whatever hoopla they made you go through prior to that.

I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but having the 9th Circuit, of all courts, find that the right to bear arms explicitly means to carry a handgun in public for self defense is quite the rebuke to many liberal states who legislate otherwise.

I liked the historical analysis they provided. It seemed like a well constructed ruling.
 
Which Circuit said the 2A doesn't apply outside the home?

Also did this just address bearing or did it address suitability?

It specifically states that the San Diego model violates the right to bears arms because the 'typical' citizen cannot get a permit to carry, and open carry is illegal, therefore it infringes. It gets a bit complicated, but I read it as saying that forcing people to show 'good cause' to exercise what is a fundamental right violates the second amendment. If people can not carry openly, then that've to give them a concealed carry permit.
 
Here's a quickie summary from Volokh's David Kopel:

David Kopel said:
California law has a process for applying for a permit to carry a handgun for protection in public, with requirements for safety training, a background check, and so on. These requirements were not challenged. The statute also requires that the applicant have “good cause,” which was interpreted by California to mean that the applicant is faced with current specific threats. The Ninth Circuit, in a 2-1 opinion written by Judge O’Scannlain, ruled that Peruta was entitled to Summary Judgement, because the “good cause” provision violates the Second Amendment.
The Court ruled that the legislature may what mode of carrying to allow (open or concealed), but the legislature may not make it impossible for the vast majority of Californians to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
 
Which Circuit said the 2A doesn't apply outside the home?

Also did this just address bearing or did it address suitability?

Washington DC courts have said it doesn't. The other circuit might be the Drake case of he 2nd but others will correct me if I'm wrong.

I am shocked to see this from the 9th. Yes it is only a 2-1 from a 3 judge group and not the en banc from the entire group of judges but still. The 9th has been packed with so many lib's over the years, it a miracle. The 9th is like it is because all the judges in CA for the 9th (a lot) need to get the ok from Boxer and Feinstein. So if you are not a loon, they block the nominee. Harry Reid's changing of the senate rules will be used often by the next R POTUS to start to correct the 9th.
 
Which Circuit said the 2A doesn't apply outside the home?

Also did this just address bearing or did it address suitability?

Good point. Most lower courts have ruled that 2A does apply outside the home, but they do the '2A two-step' and decide that the challenged regulation does not infringe that right. The MD Court of Appeals ruled differently: "If the Supreme Court, in this dicta, meant its holding to extend beyond home possession, it will need to say so more plainly."

What's seems to be different in this case (I'm still reading the decision) is that the court is calling BS on the 'good cause' requirement.

From Peruta:

For if self-defense outside the home is part of the core right to “bear arms” and the California regulatory scheme prohibits the exercise of that right, no amount of interest-balancing under a heightened form of means-ends scrutiny can justify San Diego County’s policy. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 634 (“The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon.”).
Thus, the question is not whether the California scheme (in light of San Diego County’s policy) allows some people to bear arms outside the home in some places at some times; instead, the question is whether it allows the typical responsible, law-abiding citizen to bear arms in public for the lawful purpose of self-defense. The answer to the latter question is a resounding “no.”
 
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Reading that PDF is fascinating. What I hadn't known, was just how much the Heller ruling dealt with "bearing" arms and not just "keeping". Most of the references that this ruling makes are to text from the Heller case dealing with "bearing" arms.
 
The two judge for gun rights, a Reagan appointee and GW Bush appointee, the against was a Clinton.
 
I only skimmed the ruling (so many words!) but my inexpert analysis is that they first used a historical analysis of the 2A and the word "bear" to establish that "bear" in fact encompasses carrying a gun outside the home for personal protection. They then analysed the CA laws, and the application of the "good cause" requirement, and came to the conclusion that the average, law abiding citizen has no ability to lawfully carry a gun outside the home for personal protection. This is due to the fact that open carry is outright banned, so a permit for concealed carry is the only means by which an average person can be permitted to carry a gun outside the home.

Based on the above, they ruled that the "good cause" requirement infringes on the average law abiding citizen's right to carry ("bear") a gun outside the home for self defense.

I especially liked this snippet from the end of the majority's ruling:

We are well aware that, in the judgment of many governments, the
safest sort of firearm-carrying regime is one which restricts the privilege to
law enforcement with only narrow exceptions. Nonetheless, “the
enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices
off the table. . . . Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is
outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation,
where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun
violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not
debatable is that it is not the role of this Court [or ours] to pronounce the
Second Amendment extinct.” Id. at 636. Nor may we relegate the bearing
of arms to a “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules
than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated
76into the Due Process Clause.
” McDonald, 130 S. Ct. at 3044.
 
I just read the news over a Volokh and haven't read the decision, but this strikes me as a direct split with the 4th Circuit on Woollard. I have little doubt that the County will appeal for a en banc hearing and thence to SCOTUS. If SCOTUS denied cert in Woollard because it wasn't "ripe", there has to be a better chance that they will grant cert and thus maybe settle the matter once and for all.

Of course there will be a lot of pressure on the County not to appeal this, just as there was on IL not to appeal the 7th circuit decision.

If this decision stands, it's going to have a major impact on CA and the rest of the 9th Circuit.



Good point. Most lower courts have ruled that 2A does apply outside the home, but they do the '2A two-step' and decide that the challenged regulation does not infringe that right. The MD Court of Appeals ruled differently: "If the Supreme Court, in this dicta, meant its holding to extend beyond home possession, it will need to say so more plainly."

What's seems to be different in this case (I'm still reading the decision) is that the court is calling BS on the 'good cause' requirement.

From Peruta:
 
They then analysed the CA laws, and the application of the "good cause" requirement, and came to the conclusion that the average, law abiding citizen has no ability to lawfully carry a gun outside the home for personal protection.

What I found interesting about this part was that they explicitly identified that police and other privileged classes are typically granted permits, but that the average, law abiding citizen cannot get one, which is an explicit violation(in their opinion).
 
What I found interesting about this part was that they explicitly identified that police and other privileged classes are typically granted permits, but that the average, law abiding citizen cannot.

Yup. They were making it clear that unless the right applies to all law-abiding citizens, it effectively does not exist.
 
Here's a good synopsis of how the other circuits have ruled (edited for readability):

Our opinion is not the first to address the question of whether the Second Amendment protects a responsible, law-abiding citizen’s right to bear arms outside the home for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Indeed, we are the fifth circuit court to opine expressly on the issue, joining an existent circuit split. Compare:

  • Moore - (“[a] right to bear arms . . . implies a right to carry a loaded gun outside the home” and striking down the open-and concealed-carry regulatory regime in Illinois because the state failed to justify “so substantial a curtailment of the right of armed self-defense”)
  • Drake - (recognizing that the right to bear arms may have some application outside the home, but concluding that New Jersey’s “justifiable need” permitting requirement was a presumptively lawful longstanding regulation or, alternatively, that the New Jersey regulatory scheme survived intermediate scrutiny)
  • Woollard - (presuming that Second Amendment protections exist outside the home and upholding Maryland’s regulatory scheme because it could not “substitute [a different] view[] for the considered judgment of the General Assembly,” which “appropriate[ly] balance[d]” the interests involved),
  • Kachalsky - (proceeding on the “assumption” that the right to bear arms extends outside the home, but affording “substantial deference to the predictive judgments of [the legislature]” and thus upholding the gun regulations under intermediate scrutiny).

Our reading of the Second Amendment is akin to the Seventh Circuit’s interpretation in Moore, and at odds with the approach of the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits in Drake, Woollard, and Kachalsky.
 
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