BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation and its allies in a Minnesota case challenging the state prohibition on handgun permits for young adults aged 18-20 have filed a brief asking the federal court to deny a state request to stay the injunction issued last week which declared the permitting age restriction unconstitutional.
SAF is joined in the case by the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Firearms Policy Coalition and three young adults, Austin Dye, Axel Anderson and Kristin Worth, the latter for whom the case is named. They are represented by attorneys Blair W. Nelson of Bemidji, Minn., and David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson and William V. Bergstrom at Cooper & Kirk in Washington, D.C. The case is known as Worth v. Harrington.
In her 50-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez wrote, “The Supreme Court’s recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen…compels the conclusion that Minnesota’s permitting age restriction is unconstitutional, and Plaintiffs are entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
Judge Menendez subsequently added, “(T)he Court concludes that the text of the Second Amendment includes within the right to keep and bear arms 18-to-20-year-olds, and therefore, the Second Amendment ‘presumptively guarantees [Plaintiffs’] right to ‘bear’ arms in public for self-defense.’”
In their brief to the court, SAF attorneys note, “The State claims that ‘denying the public the enforcement of its duly-enacted laws’ constitutes ‘irreparable harm,’ but as this Court found, the Minnesota law preventing 18-to-20-year-olds from acquiring a carry license is unconstitutional.” The SAF brief reminds the Court, “An unconstitutional act is not a law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties . . . it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed.”
“The state wants to perpetuate a discriminatory law the Court found unconstitutional,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “and it wants the Court to contradict itself in the process. The Court should reject this effort and refuse to grant a stay.”