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Relist Watch: And then there were guns

John Elwood reviews this week’s relists.

Because I’m busy preparing for argument, today’s installment will be brief. This week’s most intriguing development is a follow-on to our last post. After the Supreme Court denied as moot the closely watched Second Amendment case New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New York, New York, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief opinion concurring in the dismissal to note that he shared the concerns of dissenting justices that the lower courts were misapplying the court’s Second Amendment precedents. He wrote that “[t]he Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.” That week, the court released 10 Second Amendment cases it had been holding for the New York case. This week, it has relisted every one of them.

The 10 cases address a host of issues, ranging from the constitutionality of the federal ban on interstate handgun sales, to whether the Second Amendment guarantees a right to carry firearms outside the home for self-defense, to the constitutionality of various statesand localities’ firearm restrictions. We should know next Monday which of them is plenary grant material.

That’s it. That’s the post. The court has a conference scheduled for every week until the end of June, so we’ll be busy going into the final stretch. In the meantime, stay safe!

New Relists

Mance v. Barr, 18-663
Issue: Whether prohibiting interstate handgun sales, facially or as applied to consumers whose home jurisdictions authorize such transactions, violates the Second Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Rogers v. Grewal, 18-824
Issues: (1) Whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a firearm outside the home for self-defense; and (2) whether the government may deny categorically the exercise of the right to carry a firearm outside the home to typical law-abiding citizens by conditioning the exercise of the right on a showing of a special need to carry a firearm.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Pena v. Horan, 18-843
Issue: Whether California’s Unsafe Handgun Act violates the Second Amendment by banning handguns of the kind in common use for traditional lawful purposes.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Gould v. Lipson, 18-1272
Issues: (1) Whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a firearm outside the home for self-defense and (2) whether the government may deny categorically the exercise of the right to carry a firearm outside the home to typical law-abiding citizens by conditioning the exercise of the right on a showing of a special need to carry a firearm.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Cheeseman v. Polillo, 19-27
Issue: Whether states can limit the ability to bear handguns outside the home to only those found to have a sufficiently heightened “need” for self-protection.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Ciolek v. New Jersey, 19-114
Issue: Whether the legislative requirement of “justifiable need,” which, as defined, does not include general self-defense, for a permit to carry a handgun in public violates the Second Amendment.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Worman v. Healey, 19-404
Issue: Whether Massachusetts’ ban on the possession of firearms and ammunition magazines for lawful purposes unconstitutionally infringes the individual right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Malpasso v. Pallozzi, 19-423
Issue: In a challenge to Maryland’s handgun carry-permit scheme, whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Culp v. Raoul, 19-487
Issue: Whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms requires Illinois to allow qualified nonresidents to apply for an Illinois concealed-carry license.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Wilson v. Cook County, 19-704
Issues: (1) Whether the Second Amendment allows a local government to prohibit law-abiding residents from possessing and protecting themselves and their families with a class of rifles and ammunition magazines that are “in common use at [this] time” and are not “dangerous and unusual”; and (2) whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit’s method of analyzing Second Amendment issues – a three-part test that asks whether a regulation bans (1) weapons that were common at the time of ratification or (2) those that have some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia and (3) whether law-abiding citizens retain adequate means of self-defense – is consistent with the Supreme Court’s holding in District of Columbia v. Heller.
(relisted after the May 1 conference)

Returning Relists

Andrus v. Texas, 18-9674
Issue: Whether the standard for assessing ineffective assistance of counsel claims, announced in Strickland v. Washington, fails to protect the Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial and the 14th Amendment right to due process when, in death-penalty cases involving flagrantly deficient performance, courts can deny relief following a truncated “no prejudice” analysis that does not account for the evidence amassed in a habeas proceeding and relies on a trial record shaped by trial counsel’s ineffective representation.
(rescheduled before the November 1, 2019, and November 8, 2019, conferences; relisted after the November 15, 2019, November 22, 2019, December 6, 2019, December 13, 2019, January 10, January 17, January 24, February 21, February 28, March 6, March 20, March 27, April 3, April 17 and April 24 conferences)

United States v. California, 19-532
Issue: Whether provisions of California law that, with certain limited exceptions, prohibit state law-enforcement officials from providing federal immigration authorities with release dates and other information about individuals subject to federal immigration enforcement, and restrict the transfer of aliens in state custody to federal immigration custody, are preempted by federal law or barred by intergovernmental immunity.
(relisted after the January 10, January 17, March 6, March 20, March 27, April 3, April 17 and April 24 conferences)

Wexford Health v. Garrett, 19-867
Issue: Whether, if a prisoner fails to exhaust administrative remedies before filing a lawsuit, Section 1997e(a) of the Prison Litigation Reform Act mandates dismissal of the unexhausted claims, or the prisoner may cure his failure to exhaust by filing an amended complaint after his release from prison.
(relisted after the April 24 and May 1 conferences)

Recommended Citation: John Elwood, Relist Watch: And then there were guns, SCOTUSblog (May. 11, 2020, 2:03 PM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/05/relist-watch-and-then-there-were-guns/