New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, , abbreviated NYSRPA v. Bruen and also known as Bruen or NYSRPA II (to distinguish it from the 2020 case), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court related to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case concerned the constitutionality of the 1911 Sullivan Act, a New York State law requiring applicants for a pistol concealed carry license to show "proper cause", or a special need distinguishable from that of the general public, in their application.

In a 6–3 decision issued in June 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that New York's law was unconstitutional and that the ability to bear arms in public was a constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. The Court ruled that states are allowed to enforce "shall-issue" permitting, where applicants for concealed carry permits must satisfy certain objective criteria, such as passing a background check, but that "may-issue" systems that use "arbitrary" evaluations of need made by local authorities are unconstitutional.

In the wake of Bruen, several lawsuits involving federal and states' gun regulations have been filed, their plaintiffs arguing that the judiciary should evaluate the regulation not in consideration of the public good, but in light of the "historical tradition of firearm regulation", a phrase penned by majority opinion author Justice Clarence Thomas. The Supreme Court's decision has been considered by some to be a dramatic expansion of its gun jurisprudence, and has been criticized by lower courts as unworkable. Others hold that the findings of Bruen reaffirm the precedent set by District of Columbia v. Heller and clarifies the framework with which lower courts are to decide Second Amendment cases. In June 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Rahimi that federal laws restricting gun rights from those accused of domestic violence are constitutional, with the majority decision refining Bruen and stating that courts should not seek exact comparisons when applying the historical tradition test but rather look at similar analogues and general principles.

Background

Prior Second Amendment case law

The issue around the right to carry guns in public in the United States has been a contested area in politics and constitutional law since the early 2000s. Prior to the case, the Supreme Court established two major decisions toward gun possession in one's home: District of Columbia v. Heller affirmed that U.S. citizens did have an individual right, unconnected to a "well-regulated militia", to possess guns within their own homes under the Second Amendment, and McDonald v. City of Chicago affirmed this was a right that was incorporated against the states. However, the question of ownership outside of one's home had not yet reached the Supreme Court, and instead was based on an inconsistent framework of state laws and federal court decisions. These decisions were generally rested on long-standing common law that the government does have the ability to regulate firearms in public spaces to uphold state regulations on public gun possession. Across more than one thousand cases since Heller, most federal appeals courts have used intermediate scrutiny rather than strict scrutiny to judge the validity of public-carry gun control laws which defer to the states' compelling interest to protect the public by restricting possession of guns in public spaces.

Since Heller and McDonald, the Supreme Court had been pressed by gun-rights advocates like the National Rifle Association to further review Second Amendment rights related to public possession of guns but the Court had passed on numerous cases that were presented. The case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York,New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. City of New York, New York , No. 18–280 (April 27, 2020). which dealt with transporting guns out of New York City, had been accepted by the Supreme Court in 2019, but due to changes in the underlying law, the case was rendered moot.

Case background

To combat growing criminal violence in certain neighborhoods of New York City, including the assassination attempt on New York City mayor William J. Gaynor and the murder of author David Graham Phillips, Timothy Sullivan led the state legislature to enact the Sullivan Act in 1911. Chapter 195, enacted May 25, 1911, effective September 1, 1911. It made the possession of a handgun without a permit a crime, and instituted issuance of concealed carry permits at the discretion of local law enforcement. The law states that to obtain a permit, the applicant must "demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession". The state had clarified that this must be a non-speculative need for self-defense as to establish a proper cause to grant a permit. The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, along with Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, who failed to obtain a permit in New York state, challenged that law, seeking to make the issue of permits no longer discretionary. Nash, for example, sought a permit for a handgun after a string of robberies in his neighborhood but was denied as he could not prove a need for self-defense. The plaintiffs argued that the law and judgements against their permits were flawed; "Good, even impeccable, moral character plus a simple desire to exercise a fundamental right is, according to these courts, not sufficient. Nor is living or being employed in a 'high crime area.'" The Sullivan Act is considered the first may-issue public carry law in the United States, since the discretion on allowing a person to carry a gun in public is based on the evaluation of need, which seven other states adopted from New York. This is in contrast to more recent "shall-issue" licensing requirements based on determinant methods such as using background checks and aptitude checks to determine eligibility.

Lower courts

The case, filed against then-Superintendent George P. Beach II of the New York State Police and Justice Richard J. McNally of the New York Supreme Court, was initially dismissed at the Northern District of New York in 2018. The plaintiffs appealed to the Second Circuit, which affirmed the dismissal by the District Court in August 2020. Beach was replaced by Keith M. Corlett in 2019; Corlett was replaced by Kevin P. Bruen in 2021, and Bruen was subsequently named as the defendant and respondent in the suit.

Supreme Court

The petitioners had asked the Supreme Court to review their case, specifically pressing the question of "whether the Second Amendment allows the government to prohibit ordinary law-abiding citizens from carrying handguns outside the home for self-defense". The Supreme Court granted certiorari on April 26, 2021, though it limited the case to the question of "whether the State’s denial of petitioners’ applications for concealed-carry licenses for self-defense violated the Second Amendment". The case was heard on November 3, 2021. The petitioners were represented by Paul Clement, who served as solicitor general during the administration of George W. Bush and argued as amicus curiae on behalf of the United States in Heller, and on behalf of the National Rifle Association in support of the petitioners in McDonald. The respondents were represented by New York State Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, who served in the Solicitor General's Office during the administration of Bill Clinton and temporarily served as acting Solicitor General of the United States between the transition from Clinton to Bush.

The case was the first major gun-rights case that the Supreme Court had heard in more than a decade, outside of the moot New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York. It was also the first gun-rights case to be heard by the six-member conservative majority, which included Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, who in prior opinions had emphasized the need for the Supreme Court to review the current stance on Second Amendment cases. Justice Amy Coney Barrett had also expressed support for a Second Amendment review prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court. Because of the shift toward a more-conservative membership, some court analysts believed that the Court might interpret the Second Amendment more liberally in favor of individual rights over states' powers, which could render many existing public-possession regulations unconstitutional. However, as discussed by Vox Ian Millhiser, the limited question that the Court granted may restrict the issue to concealed-carry licenses and not the matter of any and all public possession.

Amicus briefs

More than eighty amicus briefs for this case were filed.Ellena Erskine. "We read all the amicus briefs in New York State Rifle so you don’t have to ". SCOTUSBlog, November 2, 2021. Accessed June 23, 2022.

Discrimination and marginalized groups

Organizations representing American minority groups submitted amicus briefs in support of striking down much of the Sullivan Act as unconstitutional.Arun Venugopal; Herb Pinder. "An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a NY case could mean more handguns in public places ". Gothamist, June 2, 2022. Accessed June 22, 2022. The Bronx Defenders, Brooklyn Defenders Services, and Black Attorneys of Legal Aid argued that the Second Amendment is a "legal fiction" in New York when it comes to people of color. According to these public defender and legal aid organizations, some 96% of those arrested for illegal gun possession in New York during 2020 were either Black or Latino. The disparate racial impact of the Sullivan Act and other discretionary New York state gun control regulations is "no accident" according to their brief provided to the Court. Black Guns Matter, A Girl & A Gun Women's Shooting League, and Armed Equality, an LGBT self-defense group, voiced a similar opinion to the Court in their own amicus brief, calling may-issue "deeply discriminatory". A group of retired New York State Supreme Court judges mostly of Italian descent and a group of Italo-American New York attorneys were the amici curiae in a brief entitled, Italo-American Jurists and Attorneys in Support of Petitioners. This brief describes the anti-Italian immigrant bias of the Sullivan Act and cites numerous sources, which support such a conclusion. This brief and the anti-Italian sentiment of the Sullivan Act were referenced by Justice Alito during oral argument.

Weakness of "proper cause" Twenty-six state attorneys general argued that the subjective nature of the proper-cause test "fails muster under any level of scrutiny" because it required license applicants to prove they "have already become victims of violent crimes" before they could carry a firearm to protect themselves against that very violence from occurring in the first place.Brief of Arizona, Missouri, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners ". Supreme Court of the United States. Accessed June 23, 2022.

Black Guns Matter opined the proper-cause requirement had no objective standards, and therefore lent itself to discriminatory usage in practice.

History and precedent