Angelo v DC - Public Transportation Ban

[Yeti]

Angelo v. DC, No. 24-7127 (D.C. Cir. 2026) :: Justia

 

 

 

 

"The United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, one of America's most important appellate courts, has just found that America's gun owners are able to sue under the Second Amendment for a ban on concealed carry holders being able to bring their guns on public transportation such as subways, the Metro Liner, and buses"

[Euler]

I didn't watch Smith's video, but I read the opinion.

The DC district court dismissed the challenge for lack of standing.

The DC Circuit didn't uphold a right to carry on public transit. It merely established standing to challenge the ban, vacated the dismissal, and sent the case back for trial.

The government's argument for lack of standing had two elements, both based on a lack of harm.

The first is that DC has a precedent that no harm occurs to a person from an unconstitutional law until and unless the person has been arrested for violating it. However, that precedent has been overridden by the US Supreme Court (in a different case) which says that a person has standing to challenge an unconstitutional law if the person would be arrested for violating it. DC admitted during oral argument that the purpose of the law is to exclude otherwise legally armed people from public transit and that such people would be arrested if discovered on public transit. Also the precedent only applies to criminal liability, but the plaintiffs are suing for (among other things) monetary damages.

The second is that DC asserted that the need for self-defense on public transit was speculative. Plaintiffs were choosing to take more expensive transportation options (which didn't prohibit carriage of firearms) based on hypothetical future crimes committed by hypothetical future criminals, which may or may not occur regardless of whether plaintiffs were armed. The lack of traceability between a real danger and a real need to be armed precluded standing. Again, DC admitted during oral argument that the purpose of the law is to exclude otherwise legally armed people from public transit. It wasn't the plaintiffs choice that the law was achieving its intended purpose. Thus the law was causing monetary harm.

I doubt that the district court will rule in favor of the plaintiffs. I would expect it to parrot the 7th Circuit "metal tubes that didn't exist at the founding" argument to uphold the ban.