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This case has been distributed for conference tomorrow alongside Snope v Brown (MD Semi Auto ban), Ocean Tactical v Rhode Island (Mag ban), and Gray v Jennings (DE denial of preliminary injunction regarding DE's semiauto rifle ban). This case involves legality of redundant background checks and licensing to possess a handgun. There have been a couple of filings since Euler's last update, but the original petition remains more clear and convincing (to my eye) than the more recent back and forth. https://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/24-373.html

In denying cert, Thomas and Alito (pg 16 of the attached PDF) and Gorsuch (pg 23 of the attached PDF) have written extensively on the denial of cert at this time as well as the poor ruling by the Hawaii Supreme Court. I have attached below SCOTUS's Orders of the Court for 12/09/2024 120924zor_32q3.pdf

Here is a link to the decision: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilsd.94464/gov.uscourts.ilsd.94464.258.0.pdf

Forgive me if I am wrong: I think the earlier post asking about the constitutionality of "as applied" rulings was asking if "as applied" rulings were some new, local judicial gymnastics being performed by lower courts to keep a law in place or whether such rulings were understood and allowed by the supreme court. They are understood and even preferred by the Supreme Court. There is no route to challenge this approach. The Supreme Court blesses this type of ruling. The details of the case can of course still be challenged.

The idea of "facial" vs "as applied" challenges has been discussed by the supreme court many times over many years. (A couple of quotes from recent decisions are below) The court does not consider an "as applied" challenge to be unequal treatment. The ruling will be precedential for all identically situated individuals. Proving that you are identically situated can be expensive and impractical. For a nice discussion of the question that is meant to be accessible, please see: https://www.cato.org/supreme-court-review/2008-2009/facial-v-applied-challenges-does-it-matter ------------------------------------ The quote below is not the first (nor probably the most recent) consideration discussing both facial and as applied challegnes, but I found it to be among the most clear and complete showing why the court prefers to issue as applied rulings: "It is neither our obligation nor within our traditional institutional role to resolve questions of constitutionality with respect to each potential situation that might develop. “It would indeed be undesirable for this Court to consider every conceivable situation which might possibly arise in the application of complex and comprehensive legislation.” United States v. Raines, 362 U. S. 17, 21 (1960) (internal quotation marks omitted). For this reason, “[a]s-applied challenges are the basic building blocks of constitutional adjudication.” Fallon, As-Applied and Facial Challenges and Third-Party Standing, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 1321, 1328 (2000)." " Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007) As for why as applied challenges often succeed more readily, there is a nice statement from the court in United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 (1987) "A facial challenge to a legislative Act is, of course, the most difficult challenge to mount successfully, since the challenger must establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid."

The challenge to the law was interpreted by the court to be that the law was unconstitutional "as applied" to the plaintiffs. This interpretation followed specific supreme court precedent including Doe v. Reed, 561 U.S. 186, 194 (2010) and Moody v. NetChoice, LLC (2024). When a law is declared unconstitutional as applied, the ruling only pertains to the plaintiffs. Such a ruling is meant for circumstances that are very particular to a given plaintiff but does not presume that the law is unconstitutional for all situations. If the law were challenged as facially unconstitutional and found to be so, then the law would not apply to anyone. That said, the ruling (assuming it withstands appeals) makes it much more likely that a facial challenge will succeed, that the state will stop enforcing the law, or that the law will change. (Please understand that I am trying to answer the question, but I am not suggesting that I agree that the ruling needed to be limited to an "as applied" challenge. In fact, to my eye, this case didn't turn on facts specific to these plaintiffs. It's a bit more like they wrote a narrow challenge for strategic reasons to avoid certain defense strategies from the State of Illinois.)

I apologize. I definitely erred regarding the status of the Barnett case. I read the "decisions below" section and misunderstood. Euler is clearly right.

Bianchi was an interlocutory appeal (judgement not yet final even though the case itself is MUCH older), which means that they were appealing before judgement. (I admit that they had good reason, but nevertheless, there was not a final judgement to appeal.) Barnett and associated cases have received final judgement from the inferior courts. I don't claim to have any idea what the Justices will do, but I don't think that you can read too much into Bianchi.

Sorry. The above post got launched prematurely. When a case is relisted, it means that it came up for discussion (at least nominally) at the conference and will be discussed again the next week (hence the term distributed). The related phrase "rescheduled" sometimes happened before a conference after the case is "distributed", which delays the discussion typically for another week. Sometimes cases are rescheduled multiple times. Cases are often relisted multiple times. In recent years, cases that are ultimately accepted are relisted at least once and often multiple times. ...but so are cases that are rejected with written dissent. A number of years ago, ScotusBlog discussed the vernacular and the differences here: https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/11/reschedule-watch/#:~:text=When the Supreme Court reschedules,after they have discussed it.

Indeed, it has now been marked on the docket as "relisted" again: https://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docket/docketfiles/html/public\23-879.html

This case has been relisted for conference on 5/23. A similar case that was not a the point of final judgement (Bianchi out of Maryland) was denied cert.

Trying to bring this back a bit... There appears to be a lot of old common law (colonial era and preceding) from England regarding the age of majority (traditionally 21) as well as simultaneous different ages for military service (sometimes as young as 12) and ages of consent (also sometimes as young as 12) (info sourced via wikipedia -- better sources or corrections are welcome). The UK and US now have the age of majority at 18. I am not sure from where the idea that all rights in our legal system must attach at the same moment comes. There are currently plenty examples including drinking, voting, smoking, age of consent etc that attach at different times, and the constitution specifies ages for senators and presidents explicitly. All that said, there may be every reason to argue that certain rights like self-defense should be tied to others like national defense and military service -- especially given the wording in the (non-limiting) preamble to the second amendment.

Though I'm not saying that this is what is happening here, one reason to pursue things in both State and Federal courts is to create a split is "courts of last resort." Most laws running afoul of 2A fundamental rights happen in the same circuit or suffer from precedent in a single circuit (see Friedman). It's not like we can challenge an "assault weapons" ban in Texas because one doesn't exist. Therefore getting the same result with different rationale or different rulings between a state supreme court and a circuit court of appeals is one route to improving the chance of SCOTUS review. That said, judges may notice this approach and choose to find adjacent, non-binding precedent persuasive. This type of strategy is a long shot, but it isn't totally without merit.

@BMeyers The conference mentioned here is not the process that you describe above (though that could conceivably happen in a year's time). When there is a petition for certiorari requesting that Scotus exercise its authority to hear a case, the Justices consider that petition. In very broad strokes, they get together and vote on whether to hear the case. It takes four votes to grant the petition and have SCOTUS take up the case. At a more granular level (but still not complete), most justices participate in a "cert pool" where their clerks divide up the cert petitions and summarize the issues concisely for the justices so that they can decide how to vote. Then, at the weekly Friday conference, if a case looks promising (the vast majority of requests are denied), it often gets relisted for a future conference at which point the justices take a close look through their own processes and clerks. At a subsequent conference, the justices may actually vote on the case. Some petitions are relisted over 10 times. In the modern era, most cases that will be accepted are relisted at least once. The case being discussed here is at the petition for certiorari stage and is fully briefed and scheduled the petition for cert is scheduled for the conference on 5/16. The justices can do whatever they deem appropriate, but betting odds would be on denial (bad for us) or relist (promising). The hope is that certiorari (review) will ultimately be granted so that oral arguments can happen next term.

This is a fascinating mess. There is an article here detailing a similar situation in the 5th circuit (not binding on anything here) suggesting some strategies, but it is clearly going to be complex. https://finaldecisions.org/avoiding-but-not-disarming-the-finality-trap/ Short summary: Joyal's claims were presumably dismissed under Rule 41 meaning the decision can't now be declared final -- even if the district court tries to do so under Rule 58,. Also, the court probably can't go back and use rule 54b (lots of gymnastics with this one) to get around the issue. The recommended approach, which is not guaranteed to work, would be to have Joyal bindingly disclaim the right to reassert the claims.