Supreme Court sidesteps rulings on age-based gun restrictions, leaving legal divide intact
By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday opted not to weigh in on the legality of state and federal laws that restrict firearm access for young adults aged 18 to 20, a rapidly evolving legal battleground that has grown more polarized since the court's landmark 2022 ruling widening gun rights.
In one of the appeals the justices declined to hear, challengers had argued that a federal ban on handgun sales to those under 21 violates the Second Amendment. A separate case involving a Florida law that imposes the same age limit on all gun purchases was also turned away. Lower courts had upheld both measures, concluding they were consistent with the nation's history of firearm regulation.
But in a contrasting move, the court left intact a lower-court ruling that struck down Pennsylvania's restrictions on carrying firearms in public during emergencies for 18-to-20-year-olds — a decision that keeps a patchwork of conflicting laws in place across the country.
The court's inaction comes amid a flurry of legal challenges to age-based gun restrictions since the 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen. That decision established a strict historical test for evaluating gun laws, requiring that any restriction be “consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Since then, lower courts have split sharply on how to apply that test. The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year upheld the federal age-21 handgun purchase ban, ruling that “from English common law to America's founding and beyond, our regulatory tradition has permitted restrictions on the sale of firearms to individuals under the age of 21.”
Yet the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit struck down the same federal prohibition, ruling that it infringes on the Second Amendment rights of adults aged 18 to 20. That decision applies only in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. The St. Louis-based 8th Circuit similarly invalidated Minnesota's minimum age for obtaining a permit to carry a handgun in public, while the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit sided with young adults challenging Pennsylvania's emergency carry ban.
On the other side, the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit upheld Florida's age-21 purchase requirement, enacted after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland that killed 17 people.
Gun rights advocates have made the 18-to-20 age group a priority, arguing that if 18-year-olds can vote and serve in the military, they should not be barred from buying firearms. Gun safety groups counter that research shows young adults are at higher risk for impulsive violence and suicide, and that age restrictions are a proven tool to reduce gun deaths.
The Supreme Court's decision to sidestep these cases leaves the legal landscape fragmented and sets the stage for future battles. The court has continued to expand gun rights this term: on June 26, it struck down a Hawaii law restricting handgun carry on many private properties open to the public, and on June 18, it limited a federal law that bars firearm possession by certain drug users, a ruling that could affect millions of Americans who use marijuana.
In a nation deeply divided over how to address gun violence — including frequent mass shootings — the court's refusal to wade into age restrictions suggests it may be content to let the lower courts wrestle with the issue for now, even as the legal contradictions grow more pronounced.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)