The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed their opening brief in a case challenging the scope of the injunction granted to the plaintiffs after the Fifth Circuit ruled that the federal firearms purchase ban for adults under 21 was unconstitutional.
Last year, a three-judge panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held that the law preventing the purchase of firearms by adults under 21-years-old was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and remanded the case back to the district court for entry of judgment. The judgment entered by the district court, however, severely limited the scope of the injunction, allowing the government to continue enforcing the law against the vast majority of SAF members and its partner organizations. The injunction limited relief to those members who reside in the geographic bounds of the Fifth Circuit (Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana) and who were members at the time the judgment was entered on Jan. 27 of this year. Neither of these restrictions is supported by law, SAF says in a news release.
SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition and Louisiana Shooting Association. They are represented by attorneys George J. Armbruster, III at Armbruster & Associates in Lafayette, Louisiana and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and William V. Bergstrom at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C.
“We have been fighting this absurd handgun purchase ban on adults who are 18-20 years old for more than half a decade now,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “There is no doubt adults in this age range are part of ‘the People,’ and it’s high time the government stopped fighting the inevitable. We have already secured a favorable ruling in the case that the government didn’t even appeal. The scope of that ruling needs to be fixed to provide the relief the Fifth Circuit intended that all SAF members be granted.”
“What the government has said outright here is ‘we acknowledge that the Fifth Circuit has held the law to be unconstitutional, but we want to still enforce it against almost everyone,’” said SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “The government has done everything possible to keep disenfranchising thousands of adults through ridiculous demands on the plaintiff organizations, all to no avail. We filed the brief today outlining why the limited scope of the judgment is legally and constitutionally improper. We are optimistic the Fifth Circuit will fix this unconstitutional overreach by granting the full scope of relief SAF has fought for and won on behalf of its members.”
As noted in the brief, “This Court should reverse and remand with instructions to enter a judgment that provides injunctive relief that covers all of the Plaintiff Organization’s 18-to-20-year-old members. While the district court appropriately granted injunctive relief in this case, it erred in defining the scope of that relief. The general principle of injunctive relief, reaffirmed many times by this Court and the Supreme Court, is that a district court should endeavor where possible to afford an injured party complete relief for their injuries.” SAF is joined in the case, FPC v. ATF (formerly Reese v. ATF) by the Louisiana Shooting Association and Firearms Policy Coalition.
SAF is also supporting a sister case, West Virginia Citizens Defense League v. ATF, challenging the same federal law, which is presently pending a petition for certiorari before the Supreme Court.
