Marquis v MA - Nonresident carry

[Euler]

In October 2022, Philip Marquis (a resident of NH) was charged with carrying a firearm without a license.

In August 2023, the trial court dismissed the charge. The state appealed directly to the MA Supreme Judicial Court.

In April 2025, the SJC reversed the dismissal and remanded the case back to trial.

In July, Marquis filed a petition with the US Supreme Court. (docket)

Petition for certiorari said:

...
QUESTION PRESENTED
Does Massachusetts' firearms licensing regime, which grants a police colonel the power to deny any nonresident traveler a temporary firearms license based upon that officer's judgment of "unsuitability," violate nonresident travelers' constitutional rights to keep and bear arms and to interstate travel?
...
Philip Marquis, a New Hampshire resident, was driving on Interstate 495 in Lowell, Massachusetts. ... His car got into an accident. ... Police officers arrived and spoke with Marquis whose car was in the breakdown lane. ... As an officer approached him, Marquis removed a pistol from his pocket and said: "I just want you to know that I have this." ... The officer asked if it was loaded and Marquis responded that it was not while racking the gun in front of him. ... The officer instructed Marquis to put the gun back in his pocket and sit on the guardrail. ... Soon afterward, he asked Marquis if he had a Massachusetts license to carry the firearm and where he had been headed. ... Marquis responded that he did not have a Massachusetts license and that he had been driving towards his workplace in Massachusetts from his home in Rochester, New Hampshire. ... After confirming that he had no Massachusetts firearm license, the officer also confirmed that Marquis "was not federally prohibited from carrying a firearm (therefore legally allowed to carry a firearm in his home state of New Hampshire)." ... Now that the SJC has reversed the dismissal of his ... charge, Marquis is vulnerable both to conviction and a mandatory minimum sentence of eighteen-months in jail. ...

[Massachusetts law] provides that the colonel of the state police shall issue any nonresident a temporary firearms license but only if the non-resident is "not a prohibited person" and "not determined unsuitable[.]" The definition of "unsuitability" is open-ended and allows the colonel to declare, without any objective criteria or standard of proof, that an applicant is unsuitable. "A determination of unsuitability shall be based on reliable, articulable and credible information that the applicant or licensee has exhibited or engaged in behavior that suggests that, if issued a license, the applicant or licensee may create a risk to public safety or a risk of danger to self or others." ... Thus, before a nonresident may enter Massachusetts with a handgun for self-defense purposes, he or she must submit to a vague "suitability" assessment.

In Bruen, this Court signaled that a "suitability" standard is unconstitutional given its reliance upon such discretionary determinations. "New York is not alone in requiring a permit to carry a handgun in public. But the vast majority of States -- 43 by our count -- are 'shall issue' jurisdictions, where authorities must issue concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy certain threshold requirements, without granting licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based on a perceived lack of need or suitability." ... This Court generally approves "shall-issue" licensing regimes so long as they "contain only 'narrow, objective, and definite standards' guiding licensing officials, ... rather than requiring the 'appraisal of facts, the exercise of judgment, and the formation of an opinion,' ... -- features that typify proper-cause standards like New York's." ... ("New York's outlier may-issue regime is constitutionally problematic because it grants open-ended discretion to licensing officials and authorizes licenses only to those applicants who can show some special need apart from self-defense.")
...

Neither NH nor MA require informing a police officer upon contact. Setting conviction aside, this guy is lucky he didn't get shot. I think I'd like to see the body cam.

[Euler]

On August 27, MA waived its right to respond.

On August 28, the Court scheduled this case for the "long conference."

On August 29, the Court asked MA to file a response, anyway, due September 29 (the same day as the conference).

On September 4, NH and 24 other states (that would be 25 total, but IL isn't one of them) filed an amici brief in support of Marquis.

[Euler]

On September 18, MA asked the court to extend the deadline to respond from September 29 to November 28 (the day after Thanksgiving).

[JTHunter]

On 9/18/2025 at 6:15 PM, Euler said:

On September 18, MA asked the court to extend the deadline to respond from September 29 to November 28 (the day after Thanksgiving).

 

🤬 Typical.  Leave the poor citizenry in "limbo" for even longer, running up their expenses. 🤮

[ragsbo]

Got to stop giving them extensions and make them get it in the courtroom and thrown out! 

[Euler]

On September 18, 2025 at 06:15 PM CDT, Euler said:→

On September 18, MA asked the court to extend the deadline to respond from September 29 to November 28 (the day after Thanksgiving).

On September 19, the Court granted the extension.

[JTHunter]

On 9/20/2025 at 11:52 PM, Euler said:

On September 19, the Court granted the extension.

 

EXCREMENT !!!  🤮

[Euler]

On November 26, MA responded.