California may enforce its recent ban on guns in “ sensitive places” when it comes to parks and playgrounds, bars and restaurants that serve alcohol, casinos, stadiums, amusement parks, zoos, libraries, museums, athletic facilities and the parking areas associated with them, a federal appellate court ruled Friday.
However, the state may not enforce similar restrictions in hospitals or other medical facilities, on public transit, at places of worship or financial institutions, or in the parking areas associated with or shared by those places, the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined.
It also may not enforce its ban on guns at all events requiring a permit, or on visitors carrying guns onto any private property where the owner has not posted signs explicitly allowing them, the panel ruled.
The appellate panel — which simultaneously issued similar findings relating to laws in Hawaii — issued its ruling in response to broad injunctions by lower courts that had blocked the bans from taking effect amid ongoing litigation over the laws.
The panel noted that some locations where it rejected statewide bans, such as banks and churches, could still bar visitors from carrying guns based on existing property laws, but the state governments could not unilaterally and universally do so for them. It said owners of private property are similarly free to ban firearms on their property.
“For the places where we hold that the states likely may not prohibit the carry of firearms, the practical effect of our ruling is merely that private-property owners may choose to allow the carry of firearms,” Circuit Judge Susan P. Graber wrote for the panel. “Owners of hospitals, banks and churches, for example, remain free to ban firearms at those locations.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed partial victory — and said the state would continue fighting to drive down gun violence.
“We refuse to accept shootings at schools, parks and concerts as a normal fact of life. While we fought for the court to go further, today’s ruling affirms our state’s authority to limit guns in many public places,” Newsom said in a statement. “California will continue to take action to protect our residents, and defend our nation-leading, life-saving gun laws from an extreme gun lobby and politicians in their pockets.”
Gun advocates characterized the ruling as a partial win, as well.
“This partially favorable decision from the 9th Circuit shows how far we’ve come over the past decade. But this case, and our work to restore the right to bear arms, is far from over,” said Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, which helped bring the challenge against the laws. “FPC will continue to fight forward until all peaceable people can fully exercise their right to carry in California and throughout the United States.”
Graber, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, was joined in the decision by Circuit Judge Mary M. Schroeder, an appointee of President Jimmy Carter; and Circuit Judge Jennifer Sung, an appointee of President Joe Biden.
The ruling was the latest to apply the historical test for gun laws set out in 2022 by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association vs. Bruen. There, the highest court said that gun laws are legitimate only if they are rooted in the nation’s history and tradition or sufficiently analogous to some historical law.
Graber’s opinion parsed through an array of historical laws to determine whether lower court injunctions blocking many of the states’ bans on guns in sensitive places should stand, or if they should be reversed based on historical precedent.
In doing so, the ruling divided public places into those where guns may be banned, such as parks; and those where they may not be based on a lack of similar restrictions in the past, such as places of worship.
That partition highlighted a reality under Bruen’s “history and tradition” test that gun control advocates have denounced as preposterous: that it precludes leaders from crafting modern gun laws to address modern realities of gun violence, such as mass shootings at places of worship.
Billy Clark, senior litigation attorney at the gun control advocacy group Giffords Law Center, said the decision “further illustrates that it is constitutional to keep guns out of sensitive places” — but also more evidence of the “chaos” in 2nd Amendment law caused by the Bruen decision.
Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at the gun control group Everytown Law, said her group didn’t agree with all aspects of the decision, but still found it “heartening.”
“Keeping guns out of sensitive places is common sense and these laws are crucial to keeping our communities safe from gun violence,” Carter said.
Adam Kraut, executive director of the gun rights advocacy group Second Amendment Foundation, said California’s expansion of “sensitive places” where guns are banned “goes beyond what the Supreme Court contemplated when it mentioned them in Bruen,” and said his group will continue to fight such bans in court.
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