Supreme Court Vacates Ruling on Pennsylvania Law Allowing 18- to 20-Year-Olds to Carry Guns

The Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 7, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 15 vacated a lower court’s ruling that allowed adults in Pennsylvania younger than the age of 21 to carry firearms in public during states of emergency, telling a federal appeals court to reconsider the case.

The Supreme Court did not explain its ruling, and there were no dissents.

The two-sentence decision by the high court indicated that the justices would not take up the appeal by Pennsylvania state officials who sought to overturn the lower court’s ruling. Instead, the justices ordered the case to be remanded back to the lower courts, and it vacated the appeals court decision that had blocked the state law.

Under the Uniform Firearms Act, Pennsylvania bars individuals ages 18 to 20 from openly carrying guns in public during a declared state of emergency. A lawsuit was filed against the state over the law, with lawyers for the petitioners saying the state law did not adhere to U.S. traditions and norms under the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In striking down a 100-year-old New York gun law that restricted places where people can carry firearms, the Supreme Court in June 2022 had established that the state law was unconstitutional because there were not any similar laws in the United States when the Second Amendment was ratified.

Earlier this year, the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit blocked that law in a divided 2–1 decision. The majority of judges ruled that Pennsylvania wasn’t able to show that the age-21 requirement met the Bruen legal test and that it wasn’t in keeping with those U.S. traditions.

In their lawsuit, two gun rights organizations are challenging the Pennsylvania law along with three people younger than age 21 when the petition was filed in 2020. They called on the Supreme Court to reject arguments from the state without ordering any reconsideration from the lower courts and argued that lower courts have a “broad agreement” on the Third Circuit’s decision to overturn the state law.

The appeals court, in overturning the law, stated that there is a “conspicuously sparse record of state regulations on 18-to-20-year-olds at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification,” noting that in 1792, there was actually a law passed in Congress mandating “all able-bodied men to enroll in the militia and to arm themselves upon turning 18.”

“That young adults had to serve in the militia indicates that founding-era lawmakers believed those youth could, and indeed should, keep and bear arms,” the appeals court stated.

In response, the state of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Christopher Paris petitioned the appeals court’s decision to the Supreme Court in late April.

Pennsylvania officials argued in court papers that the appeals court went too far in its decision and misinterpreted the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision and pointed to a concurring opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito

“[Alito had] explained in his Bruen concurrence that this Court did not invalidate existing age restrictions, highlighting that federal law bars the sale of handguns to under-21-year-olds,” state officials wrote.

“But the Court of Appeals interpreted Bruen to do just that, holding that Pennsylvania could not prohibit 18-to-20-year-olds from openly carrying firearms during a state of emergency. The panel majority believed Bruen required Pennsylvania to produce a regulatory twin from the Founding era imposing similar restrictions on the freedom of 18-to-20-year-olds to prevail.”

They also made reference to the Supreme Court’s order in June that upheld a federal ban barring individuals from owning firearms if they are under domestic violence-related orders

That ruling, United States v. Rahimi, overturned the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in 2023 that invalidated a federal law blocking a person with a civil domestic violence restraining order from owning a firearm.

“Several justices of this Court noted that it must provide additional help to the lower courts in trying to apply Bruen to thorny cases,” Pennsylvania’s attorneys wrote to the justices.

However, the gun rights groups and plaintiffs responded to the state by agreeing with the Third Circuit’s decision, noting that the court’s “conclusion that the Second Amendment’s text and history require holding special restrictions on the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds unconstitutional resulted from a faithful application of this Court’s precedents,” they wrote to the Supreme Court in a filing earlier this year.