By Zachary Stieber
A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reconsidered whether Pennsylvania’s ban on 18 to 20-year-olds openly carrying guns during emergencies was constitutional after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 remanded the case back to the circuit court.
A majority of the panel said their previous decision, which concluded that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, was correct even in light of recent Supreme Court rulings that struck down a New York gun law and upheld a federal gun law. The rulings are known as Bruen and Rahimi.
“We conclude that our prior analysis reflects the approach taken in Bruen and clarified in Rahimi,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kent A. Jordan wrote for the majority. “We did indeed consider ‘whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,’ not whether a ‘historical twin’ of the regulation exists. Having determined that Rahimi sustains our prior analysis, we will again reverse and remand the District Court’s judgment.”
Pennsylvania adults and gun groups sued over the laws in 2020, arguing they violated the constitutional rights of those aged 18 to 20. U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV ruled in 2021 that the restrictions covered conduct that was outside the scope of the Second Amendment, citing a 2008 Supreme Court ruling.
Supreme Court justices said in the 2022 Bruen ruling that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers conduct, that conduct is presumptively protected by the Constitution. To justify a regulation restricting such conduct, officials must show that the regulation “is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” they said.
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