New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. BruenSUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
NEW YORK STATE RIFLE & PISTOL ASSOCIATION, INC., et al. v. BRUEN, SUPERINTENDENT OF NEW YORK STATE POLICE, et al. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the second circuitNo.
20–843. Argued November 3, 2021—Decided June 23, 2022
Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a concurring opinion. Kavanaugh, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., joined. Barrett, J., filed a concurring opinion. Breyer, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., joined. Justice
Thomas delivered the opinion of the
Court.
In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense. In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home. The parties nevertheless dispute whether New York’s licensing regime respects the constitutional right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense. In 43 States, the government issues licenses to carry based on objective criteria. But in six States, including New York, the government further conditions issuance of a license to carry on a citizen’s showing of some additional special need. Because the State of New York issues public-carry licenses only when an applicant demonstrates a special need for self-defense, we conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution. INew York public carry of handguns at least since the early 20th century. . . .Today’s licensing scheme largely tracks that of the early 1900s. It is a crime in New York to possess “any firearm” without a license, whether inside or outside the home, punishable by up to four years in prison or a $5,000 fine for a felony offense, and one year in prison or a $1,000 fine for a misdemeanor. Meanwhile, possessing a loaded firearm outside one’s home or place of business without a license is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison. A license applicant who wants to possess a firearm at home (or in his place of business) must convince a “licensing officer”—usually a judge or law enforcement officer—that, among other things, he is of good moral character, has no history of crime or mental illness, and that “no good cause exists for the denial of the license.” If he wants to carry a firearm outside his home or place of business for self-defense, the applicant must obtain an unrestricted license to “have and carry” a concealed “pistol or revolver.” To secure that license, the applicant must prove that “proper cause exists” to issue it. No New York statute defines
“proper cause.” But New York courts have held that an
applicant shows proper cause only if he can
“demonstrate a special need for self-protection
distinguishable from that of the general community.”This
“special need” standard is demanding. For example,
living or working in an area “ ‘noted for
criminal activity’ ” does not suffice. . . . New York is not alone in
requiring a permit to carry a handgun in public. But
the vast majority of States—43 by our count—are “shall
issue” jurisdictions, where authorities must issue
concealed-carry licenses whenever applicants satisfy
certain threshold requirements, without granting
licensing officials discretion to deny licenses based
on a perceived lack of need or suitability. Meanwhile,
only six States and the District of Columbia
have “may issue” licensing laws, under which
authorities have discretion to deny concealed-carry
licenses even when the applicant satisfies the
statutory criteria, usually because the applicant has
not demonstrated cause or suitability for the relevant
license. Aside from New York, then, only California,
the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maryland,
Massachusetts, and New Jersey have analogues to
the standard of “proper cause.” As set forth in the pleadings below, petitioners Brandon Koch and Robert Nash are law-abiding, adult citizens of Rensselaer County, New York. Koch lives in Troy, while Nash lives in Averill Park. Petitioner New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., is a public-interest group organized to defend the Second Amendment rights of New Yorkers. Both Koch and Nash are members. In 2014, Nash applied for an unrestricted license to carry a handgun in public. Nash did not claim any unique danger to his personal safety; he simply wanted to carry a handgun for self-defense. In early 2015, the State denied Nash’s application for an unrestricted license but granted him a restricted license for hunting and target shooting only. In late 2016, Nash asked a licensing officer to remove the restrictions, citing a string of recent robberies in his neighborhood. After an informal hearing, the licensing officer denied the request. The officer reiterated that Nash’s existing license permitted him “to carry concealed for purposes of off road back country, outdoor activities similar to hunting,” such as “fishing, hiking & camping etc.” But, at the same time, the officer emphasized that the restrictions were “intended to prohibit [Nash] from carrying concealed in ANY LOCATION typically open to and frequented by the general public.”. Between 2008 and 2017, Koch was in the same position as Nash: He faced no special dangers, wanted a handgun for general self-defense, and had only a restricted license permitting him to carry a handgun outside the home for hunting and target shooting. In late 2017, Koch applied to a licensing officer to remove the restrictions on his license, citing his extensive experience in safely handling firearms. Like Nash’s application, Koch’s was denied, except that the officer permitted Koch to “carry to and from work. . .” Respondents are the
superintendent of the New York State Police, who
oversees the enforcement of the State’s licensing
laws, and a New York Supreme Court justice, who
oversees the processing of licensing applications in
Rensselaer County. We granted certiorari to
decide whether New York’s denial of petitioners’
license applications violated the Constitution. IIIn Heller and McDonald, we held that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. In doing so, we held unconstitutional two laws that prohibited the possession and use of handguns in the home. In the years since, the Courts of Appeals have coalesced around a “two-step” framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges that combines history with means-end scrutiny. Today, we decline to adopt that two-part approach. In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command.” Since Heller and McDonald, the two-step test that Courts of Appeals have developed to assess Second Amendment claims proceeds as follows. At the first step, the government may justify its regulation by “establish[ing] that the challenged law regulates activity falling outside the scope of the right as originally understood.” But if the historical evidence at this step is “inconclusive or suggests that the regulated activity is not categorically unprotected,” the courts generally proceed to step two.At the second step, courts often analyze “how close the law comes to the core of the Second Amendment right and the severity of the law’s burden on that right.” If a “core” Second Amendment right is burdened, courts apply “strict scrutiny” and ask whether the Government can prove that the law is “narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest.” Otherwise, they apply intermediate scrutiny and consider whether the Government can show that the regulation is “substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest.” Both respondents and the United States largely agree with this consensus, arguing that intermediate scrutiny is appropriate when text and history are unclear in attempting to delineate the scope of the right. Despite the popularity of this two-step approach, it is one step too many. Step one of the predominant framework is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by history. But Heller and McDonald do not support applying means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context. Instead, the government must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms . . ..We reiterate that the standard for applying the Second Amendment is as follows: When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s “unqualified command." This Second Amendment
standard accords with how we protect other
constitutional rights. Take, for instance, the freedom
of speech in the First Amendment, to which Heller
repeatedly compared the right to keep and bear
arms. In that context, “[w]hen the Government
restricts speech, the Government bears the burden of
proving the constitutionality of its actions.”
In some cases, that burden includes showing whether
the expressive conduct falls outside of the category
of protected speech. And to carry that burden, the
government must generally point to historical
evidence about the reach of the First Amendment’s
protections. . . . If the last decade of Second Amendment litigation has taught this Court anything, it is that federal courts tasked with making such difficult empirical judgments regarding firearm regulations under the banner of “intermediate scrutiny” often defer to the determinations of legislatures. But while that judicial deference to legislative interest balancing is understandable—and, elsewhere, appropriate—it is not deference that the Constitution demands here. The Second Amendment “is the very product of an interest balancing by the people” and it “surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms” for self-defense. It is this balance—struck by the traditions of the American people—that demands our unqualified deference. The test that we set forth in Heller and apply today requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding. In some cases, that inquiry will be fairly straightforward. For instance, when a challenged regulation addresses a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Likewise, if earlier generations addressed the societal problem, but did so through materially different means, that also could be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional. And if some jurisdictions actually attempted to enact analogous regulations during this timeframe, but those proposals were rejected on constitutional grounds, that rejection surely would provide some probative evidence of unconstitutionality. New York’s proper-cause
requirement concerns the same alleged societal problem
addressed in Heller: “handgun violence,”
primarily in “urban area[s].” Following the
course charted by Heller, we will consider
whether “historical precedent” from before, during,
and even after the founding evinces a comparable
tradition of regulation. And, as we explain below, we
find no such tradition in the historical materials
that respondents and their amici have
brought to bear on that question. While the historical analogies
here and in Heller are relatively simple to
draw, other cases implicating unprecedented societal
concerns or dramatic technological changes may require
a more nuanced approach. The regulatory challenges
posed by firearms today are not always the same
as those that preoccupied the Founders in 1791
or the Reconstruction generation in 1868. Fortunately,
the Founders created a Constitution—and a Second
Amendment—“intended to endure for ages to come, and
consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of
human affairs.” Although its meaning is fixed
according to the understandings of those who ratified
it, the Constitution can, and must, apply to
circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically
anticipated. We have
already recognized in Heller at least one
way in which the Second Amendment’s historically fixed
meaning applies to new circumstances: Its reference to
“arms” does not apply “only [to] those arms in
existence in the 18th century.” “Just as the First
Amendment protects modern forms of communications, and
the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of
search, the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to
all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even
those that were not in existence at the time of the
founding.” Thus, even though the Second Amendment’s
definition of “arms” is fixed according to its
historical understanding, that general definition
covers modern instruments that facilitate armed
self-defense. Much like we use history to
determine which modern “arms” are protected by the
Second Amendment, so too does history guide our
consideration of modern regulations that were
unimaginable at the founding. When confronting such
present-day firearm regulations, this historical
inquiry that courts must conduct will often involve
reasoning by analogy—a commonplace task for any lawyer
or judge. Like all analogical reasoning,
determining whether a historical regulation is a
proper analogue for a distinctly modern firearm
regulation requires a determination of whether the two
regulations are “relevantly similar.” While we do not now provide an exhaustive survey of the features that render regulations relevantly similar under the Second Amendment, we do think that Heller and McDonald point toward at least two metrics: how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense. As we stated in Heller and repeated in McDonald, “individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right.” To be clear, analogical reasoning under the Second Amendment is neither a regulatory straightjacket nor a regulatory blank check. On the one hand, courts should not “uphold every modern law that remotely resembles a historical analogue,” because doing so “risk[s] endorsing outliers that our ancestors would never have accepted.” On the other hand, analogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin. So even if a modern-day regulation is not a dead ringer for historical precursors, it still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster. Consider, for example, Heller’s discussion of “longstanding” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.” Although the historical record yields relatively few 18th- and 19th-century “sensitive places” where weapons were altogether prohibited—e.g., legislative assemblies, polling places, and courthouses—we are also aware of no disputes regarding the lawfulness of such prohibitions. We therefore can assume it settled that these locations were “sensitive places” where arms carrying could be prohibited consistent with the Second Amendment. And courts can use analogies to those historical regulations of “sensitive places” to determine that modern regulations prohibiting the carry of firearms in new and analogous sensitive places are constitutionally permissible. Although we have no occasion to comprehensively define “sensitive places” in this case, we do think respondents err in their attempt to characterize New York’s proper-cause requirement as a “sensitive-place” law. In their view, “sensitive places” where the government may lawfully disarm law-abiding citizens include all “places where people typically congregate and where law-enforcement and other public-safety professionals are presumptively available.” Put simply, there is no historical basis for New York to effectively declare the island of Manhattan a “sensitive place” simply because it is crowded and protected generally by the New York City Police Department. III Having made the constitutional standard endorsed in Heller more explicit, we now apply that standard to New York’s proper-cause requirement. It is undisputed that petitioners Koch and Nash—two ordinary, law-abiding, adult citizens—are part of “the people” whom the Second Amendment protects. Nor does any party dispute that handguns are weapons “in common use” today for self-defense. We therefore turn to whether the plain text of the Second Amendment protects Koch’s and Nash’s proposed course of conduct—carrying handguns publicly for self-defense. We have little difficulty concluding that it does. Nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms. As we explained in Heller, the “textual elements” of the Second Amendment’s operative clause— “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”—“guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”. This definition of “bear” naturally encompasses public carry. Most gun owners do not wear a holstered pistol at their hip in their bedroom or while sitting at the dinner table. Although individuals often “keep” firearms in their home, at the ready for self-defense, most do not “bear” (i.e., carry) them in the home beyond moments of actual confrontation. To confine the right to “bear” arms to the home would nullify half of the Second Amendment’s operative protections. Moreover, confining the right to “bear” arms to the home would make little sense given that self-defense is “the central component of the [Second Amendment] right itself.” After all, the Second Amendment guarantees an “individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation” and confrontation can surely take place outside the home. Although we remarked in Heller that the need for armed self-defense is perhaps “most acute” in the home, we did not suggest that the need was insignificant elsewhere. Many Americans hazard greater danger outside the home than in it. “[A] Chicagoan is a good deal more likely to be attacked on a sidewalk in a rough neighborhood than in his apartment on the 35th floor of the Park Tower.” The text of the Second Amendment reflects that reality. The Second Amendment’s plain text thus presumptively guarantees petitioners Koch and Nash a right to “bear” arms in public for self-defense. Conceding that the Second Amendment guarantees a general right to public carry, respondents instead claim that the Amendment “permits a State to condition handgun carrying in areas ‘frequented by the general public’ on a showing of a non- speculative need for armed self-defense in those areas.” To support that claim, the burden falls on respondents to show that New York’s proper-cause requirement is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if respondents carry that burden can they show that the pre-existing right codified in the Second Amendment, and made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth, does not protect petitioners’ proposed course of conduct. Respondents appeal to a variety of historical sources from the late 1200s to the early 1900s. We categorize these periods as follows: (1) medieval to early modern England; (2) the American Colonies and the early Republic; (3) antebellum America; (4) Reconstruction; and (5) the late-19th and early-20th centuries. We categorize these historical sources because, when it comes to interpreting the Constitution, not all history is created equal. “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them.” The Second Amendment was adopted in 1791; the Fourteenth in 1868. Historical evidence that long predates either date may not illuminate the scope of the right if linguistic or legal conventions changed in the intervening years. It is one thing for courts to “reac[h] back to the 14th century” for English practices that “prevailed up to the ‘period immediately before and after the framing of the Constitution.’ ”It is quite another to rely on an “ancient” practice that had become “obsolete in England at the time of the adoption of the Constitution” and never “was acted upon or accepted in the colonies. . . .” Respondents next point us to the history of the Colonies and early Republic, but there is little evidence of an early American practice of regulating public carry by the general public. This should come as no surprise—English subjects founded the Colonies at about the time England had itself begun to eliminate restrictions on the ownership and use of handguns. In the colonial era,
respondents point to only three restrictions on public
carry. For starters, we doubt that three
colonial regulations could suffice to show a tradition
of public-carry regulation. In any event, even looking
at these laws on their own terms, we are not convinced
that they regulated public carry akin to the New York
law before us.. . . We acknowledge that the Texas cases support New York’s proper-cause requirement, which one can analogize to Texas’ “reasonable grounds” standard. But the Texas statute, and the rationales set forth in English and Duke, are outliers.. .. Finally, respondents point to the slight uptick in gun regulation during the late-19th century—principally in the Western Territories....Beyond these Territories, respondents identify one Western State—Kansas—that instructed cities with more than 15,000 inhabitants to pass ordinances prohibiting the public carry of firearms. See 1881 Kan. Sess. Laws §§1, 23, pp. 79, 92.31 By 1890, the only cities meeting the population threshold were Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita. Even if each of these three cities enacted prohibitions by 1890, their combined population (93,000) accounted for only 6.5% of Kansas’ total population. Although other Kansas cities may also have restricted public carry unilaterally, the lone late-19th-century state law respondents identify does not prove that Kansas meaningfully restricted public carry, let alone demonstrate a broad tradition of States doing so.* * *At the end of this long journey through the Anglo-American history of public carry, we conclude that respondents have not met their burden to identify an American tradition justifying the State’s proper-cause requirement. The Second Amendment guaranteed to “all Americans” the right to bear commonly used arms in public subject to certain reasonable, well-defined restrictions. Those restrictions, for example, limited the intent for which one could carry arms, the manner by which one carried arms, or the exceptional circumstances under which one could not carry arms, such as before justices of the peace and other government officials. Apart from a few late-19th-century outlier jurisdictions, American governments simply have not broadly prohibited the public carry of commonly used firearms for personal defense. Nor, subject to a few late-in-time outliers, have American governments required law-abiding, responsible citizens to “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community” in order to carry arms in public. IVThe constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not “a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 780 (plurality opinion). We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need. That is not how the First Amendment works when it comes to unpopular speech or the free exercise of religion. It is not how the Sixth Amendment works when it comes to a defendant’s right to confront the witnesses against him. And it is not how the Second Amendment works when it comes to public carry for self-defense. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevents law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms. We therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. |