California Must Let Nonresidents Apply for Concealed Carry Permits, Judge Rules

A Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver cools down at a target range in Los Angeles, in this file photo. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

California must create a pathway that would allow visitors to lawfully carry a gun while staying in the state, a federal judge ruled.

The Aug. 20 ruling is a partial victory for a coalition of Second Amendment advocacy groups challenging the Golden State’s concealed carry licensing process, which not only denies applications from out-of-state gun owners, but also doesn’t recognize permits issued by other states.

The suit was filed on behalf of seven individual gun owners, including a Florida man who has a valid carry license in his home state but is not allowed to carry a gun for self-defense when traveling to California.

“In order words, if you are visiting California from another state, or if you need to cross into the state regularly for work, you check your federally enumerated right to carry for self-defense at California’s border,” the complaint reads.

The other six plaintiffs challenged what they called excessively high fees to obtain a California permit, the wait times lasting more than a year, the required psychological exam, and the issuing agency’s authority to deny the permit application based on its own discretion. They argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the case known as Bruen makes California’s position “plainly unconstitutional.”

In New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the high court’s 6–3 majority ruled that Americans’ right to bear arms extends beyond their homes and that the state must not require people to prove that they have a “good reason” or “good moral character” before they can possess a weapon for self-defense.

California’s concealed-carry permit procedure won’t withstand Bruen scrutiny, the suit alleged, since the process burdens applicants with numerous preconditions and excludes non-residents.

In response, California argued that the United States’ historical tradition supports locality-based licensing laws.

The state noted that Oregon required in 1913 that anyone purchasing a firearm have a license signed by an official “in the county wherein such person resides.” And in 1925, West Virginia required people applying for a license to carry to prove that they had been “a bona fide resident” of the state for at least a year and “of the county” in which they filed their application for 60 days.

“If a person during the Founding or Reconstruction eras were carrying a firearm, they would have had to comply with a local jurisdiction’s law when they reached its border, regardless of any differing laws in their home state or locality,” California said in its argument, without providing any specific examples.

The judge rejected the state’s historical analogy. Those 20th-century laws alone, she said, are not compelling enough to support the claim that California’s modern-day regulations would have been allowed at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification.

“The State has not carried its burden at this stage to show that the limitation of [concealed-carry] licenses to California residents is part of a historical tradition of this Nation,” Judge Sherilyn Garnett of the Central District of California wrote in her Aug. 20 opinion.

The judge granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ request. She issued a preliminary injunction invalidating the California law barring out-of-state residents from applying for a concealed carry permit but stopped short of ordering the state to recognize non-California permits.

Garnett also ruled that the waiting period was too long and must be cut substantially. She chose not to issue an injunction against the fees, the required psychological exam, and the discretionary denials, instead saying these issues will have to wait until she can rule on the merits of the case.

The Second Amendment Foundation, a leading petitioner in the case, celebrated the ruling.

“Americans do not leave their Second Amendment right to bear arms at the California border,” Alan Gottlieb, the national organization’s founder and executive vice president, said in an emailed statement.

The ruling is the second time this month a government has been ordered to open concealed-carry applications to non-residents. On Aug. 12, New York City adopted an emergency order to issue permits to non-New Yorkers to avoid a lawsuit by Gun Owners of America, which also joined the California suit as a plaintiff.