The 9th Circuit allowed a judge’s ruling that barred California from enforcing a new law to go into effect.
A U.S. appeals court on Jan. 6 allowed a judge’s ruling that blocked California from enforcing a new gun-control law that bans the carrying of firearms in most public places on the grounds that it was unconstitutional.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved an order by a different 9th Circuit panel from a week earlier that suspended an injunction issued by a judge who concluded that the Democrat-led state’s law violated the right of citizens to keep and bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment.
“The administrative stay previously entered is dissolved,” the court wrote in May v. Bonta. “The emergency motion under Circuit Rule 27-3 for a stay pending appeal and for an interim administrative stay is denied pending further order of the court.”
Last week’s order temporarily stayed the injunction. It allowed the law to take effect on Jan. 1. Gun rights groups then asked the 9th Circuit to reconsider, and on Jan. 6, a different panel of judges dissolved the order, suspending the injunction.
“So the politicians’ ploy to get around the Second Amendment has been stopped for now,” C.D. Michel, a lawyer for the gun rights groups, said in a statement.
California’s appeal of the injunction will now be heard in April. The state’s attorney general, in court papers, had argued that “tens of millions of Californians will face a heightened risk of gun violence” if the law were blocked.
The law was enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in June 2022 that expanded gun rights nationwide. The high court, in that case, struck down New York’s strict gun permit regime and declared for the first time that the right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment protects a person’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense, establishing a legal precedent for future cases.
