New York gun law provisions that bar the carrying of guns on private property open to the public and mandate that permit applicants disclose their social media accounts are unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled on Oct. 24.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declined to block other parts of the statute.
The Concealed Carry Improvement Act makes it a crime for a person to carry a gun on private property “where such person knows or reasonably should know that the owner or lessee of such property has not permitted such possession by clear and conspicuous signage indicating that the carrying of firearms, rifles, or shotguns on their property is permitted or by otherwise giving express consent.”
Another part of the law forces people applying for concealed carry permits to disclose a list of their social media accounts, which violates constitutional rights, according to the ruling.
“Although the review of public social media posts by a licensing officer poses no constitutional difficulties, requiring applicants to disclose even pseudonymous account names under which they post online imposes an impermissible infringement on Second Amendment rights that is unsupported by analogues in the historical record and moreover presents serious First Amendment concerns,” the panel said.
The U.S. Supreme Court has said that when imposing restrictions on rights that fall under the Second Amendment, officials must provide historical analogs for those restrictions. New York officials offered past regulations similar to the two restrictions, but the Second Circuit judges said they were not similar enough to support them.
The panel declined to block the rest of the law, which includes requiring permit applicants to show they have good moral character and enabling some private properties, including churches, to prohibit guns.
“Rahimi involved a regulation of firearms that is quite different from any of those at issue in the present case, and thus has little direct bearing on our conclusions,” the Second Circuit panel said. The judges said they still “conscientiously followed the Court’s mandate” to reconsider the ruling.
The decision upheld part of a lower court injunction against the law, vacated another part of the injunction, and remanded the case back to the lower court.
“This decision is another victory in our effort to protect all New Yorkers from the scourge of gun violence. After repeated attempts to weaken our gun safety regulations, once again we have prevailed,“ New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, said in a statement. ”Commonsense gun safety legislation helps protect New Yorkers, and my office will always stand up to defend these laws.”
“This is an incredibly frustrating ruling. The Second Circuit got it wrong the first time, SCOTUS told them so and said try again, and this nearly identical ruling is a slap in the face to the Justices and every gun owner across New York,” Erich Pratt, the group’s senior vice president, said in a statement.
“This ruling will continue to leave innocent New Yorkers, who simply want the ability to protect themselves and their loved ones, defenseless,“ added Sam Paredes, speaking on behalf of the Gun Owners of America’s board. ”Make no mistake, we will press on, even if it requires asking SCOTUS to once again weigh in.”
