A federal court ruling that a Minnesota law prohibiting 18-to-20-year-olds from obtaining permits to carry handguns in public is unconstitutional remained on hold Monday while the state pursues a potential appeal.
A reluctant U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez struck down the state law on Friday, citing a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on gun rights last year. But after the state attorney general’s office filed an emergency motion for a stay, she agreed to hold off, meaning 18-to-20-year-olds still can’t apply for carry permits in Minnesota until the matter is resolved.
The ruling is the latest example how the Supreme Court case, known as the Bruen decision, has upended gun laws nationwide, dividing courts and sowing confusion over what restrictions can remain in force.
The plaintiffs are three gun rights groups, including the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, and three individuals who were over 18 but under 21 when the lawsuit was filed in 2021. They have until Wednesday to file a response. The judge has not set a hearing date.
Menendez said in her order Friday that she was obligated by the Bruen decision to conclude that that Second Amendment guarantees the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds to bear arms in public for self defense.
The Bruen decision, the high court’s biggest gun ruling in more than a decade, held that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense. And it changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions. The justices said judges should no longer consider whether the law serves pubic interests like protecting public safety. Under the new test, courts must ask whether a gun restriction is consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Menendez concluded that that means the Second Amendment protects the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds to obtain carry permits. But she also wrote that other courts have “struggled with deciphering exactly how to apply Bruen’s instructions.” While Minnesota adopted its age restriction in 2003 over public safety concerns about allowing young adults to carry handguns, she concluded that the high court’s ruling doesn’t allow balancing public safety interests against Second Amendment rights.
