By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear Missouri’s bid to revive a Republican-backed law intended to prevent enforcement of several federal gun laws in the state.
The justices turned away Missouri’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that the state law violated language in the U.S. Constitution called the Supremacy Clause that holds that federal laws take precedence over conflicting state laws.
The law, passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed by Republican then-Governor Mike Parson in 2021, is called the Second Amendment Preservation Act, referring to the Constitution’s provision enshrining the right “to keep and bear arms.” The law declares that certain federal gun restrictions violate the Second Amendment.
The U.S. Justice Department during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration filed a lawsuit challenging the law on Supremacy Clause grounds. U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes in 2023 blocked enforcement of the law. His decision was upheld by the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024.
Missouri launched its appeal to the Supreme Court on January 23, three days after Republican Donald Trump returned to the presidency, ushering in an administration supportive of expansive gun rights.
Trump’s Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to decline to hear the case, even though the administration said it has reevaluated Missouri’s law and no longer wants to fully bar its enforcement.
The Missouri law sought to declare that certain federal regulations governing the sale, taxation and possession of firearms would be deemed by Missouri as infringements of the Second Amendment. The law threatened state and local officials with fines of up to $50,000 for knowingly enforcing federal gun laws considered by the state legislature to be Second Amendment violations.
The measure, however, did not make clear the specific federal laws or regulations that the state viewed as invalid. Among the category of federal laws it deemed invalid were any “forbidding the possession, ownership, use or transfer of a firearm, firearm accessory or ammunition by law-abiding citizens,” as well as any “act ordering the confiscation of firearms, firearm accessories or ammunition from law-abiding citizens.” It did not define “law-abiding.”
The Biden administration argued that the measure impeded the U.S. government’s ability to enforce federal law, in violation of the Supremacy Clause. It said the statute caused many Missouri state and local law enforcement agencies to stop voluntarily assisting in the enforcement of federal gun laws or providing investigative assistance.
Wimes, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, agreed. Missouri appealed, arguing that the state was allowed to withdraw the authority of state officers to enforce federal law, regardless of its reason for doing so. The 8th Circuit upheld the judge’s ruling.
Under Trump, the Justice Department reevaluated the Missouri case and told the justices that while it still views parts of the state law as unconstitutional, some parts “present more difficult questions.”
As a result, while the Justice Department said the Supreme Court should avoid hearing the case, the Trump administration has decided to clear the way for Missouri to ask Wimes to narrow his ruling.
In three major rulings since 2008, the Supreme Court has widened gun rights, including a 2022 decision that declared for the first time that the U.S. Constitution protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.
In that ruling, the court set a tough new standard for assessing the constitutionality of gun laws, finding they must be comparable with restrictions traditionally adopted throughout U.S. history in order to comply with the Second Amendment.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)
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