A three-judge panel ruled 3–0 in rejecting the law, which was passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature in 2021.
A federal appeals court on Monday ruled in favor of the Biden administration by scrapping a Missouri state law that declared several federal gun laws invalid.
A three-judge panel of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
rejected Missouri’s bid to reverse a lower-court judge’s decision to bar the state from enforcing a 2021 law known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA).
U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes in 2023
declared the law unconstitutional. But Missouri, under Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, appealed the case.
The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against the law, signed in 2021 by Republican Gov. Mike Parson after it was passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature.
“That Missouri may lawfully withhold its assistance from federal law enforcement, however, does not mean that the State may do so by purporting to invalidate federal law,” Chief Judge Steven Colloton wrote in the 3–0 ruling.
Should Missouri stop aiding federal officials in the enforcement of firearms laws, the state “may do so by other means that are lawful, and assume political accountability for that decision,” the judge said, saying the law violates the Constitution’s supremacy clause.
On Monday, after the court’s opinion was released, Bailey signaled that he might appeal the decision.
“I will always fight for Missourians’ Second Amendment rights,” he
wrote on social media platform X. He
wrote in a later post, “Shall Not Be Infringed,” referring to the ending portion of the Second Amendment’s text.
While arguing to keep the law intact, Bailey has previously said that the law was within the state’s rights.
“If the state legislature wants to expand upon the foundational rights codified in the Second Amendment, they have the authority to do that,” the attorney general
said. “But SAPA is also about the Tenth Amendment. It’s about federalism and individual liberty.”
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, in a
statement, praised the appeals court’s decision on Monday. He wrote that the law was “undermining efforts of federal agents and local police officers” to enforce gun laws in the state and in his city.
Under the Missouri law, state and local officials could be fined up to $50,000 for knowingly enforcing federal gun laws considered by the state Legislature to be violating the Second Amendment.
When the DOJ filed its
lawsuit against Missouri two years ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland decried the law as an impediment against “criminal law enforcement operations in Missouri.”
“The United States will work to ensure that our state and local law enforcement partners are not penalized for doing their jobs to keep our communities safe,” Garland said in a
statement released at the time.
Brian Boynton, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Division,
said that states “cannot simply declare federal laws invalid” and that it “makes enforcement of federal firearms laws difficult and strains the important law enforcement partnerships that help keep violent criminals off the street.”
Federal law enforcement agencies within the state report that enforcement of federal firearms laws in Missouri has grown more difficult since the law became effective, the DOJ said in the statement.
Frederic Winston, the special agent in charge of the Kansas City branch office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF),
wrote in an affidavit to the court in a separate case that about a dozen local and state officers have stopped participating in ATF task forces due to the Missouri law.
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court kept the law on hold by
refusing to hear the case as the legal challenge played out in the appeals court. Justice Clarence Thomas indicated that he would have heard the case.
The Epoch Times contacted the DOJ for comment on Monday but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.
Reuters contributed to this report.
