BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners today filed a nine-page reply brief supporting their earlier motion for a preliminary injunction in their federal court challenge of California’s new one-way fee shifting penalty in the government’s favor that applies only to litigation challenging state gun laws.
The case is known as Miller v. Bonta. Joining SAF are plaintiffs James Miller; Ryan Peterson; John Phillips; Gunfighter Tactical, LLC; PWGG, L.P.; San Diego County Gun Owners Political Action Committee; California Gun Rights Foundation; and Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc.; John W. Dillon; Dillon Law Group, P.C.; and George M. Lee. Defendants are California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Luis Lopez, Director of the California Department of Justice Bureau of Firearms, in their official capacities. The case was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
“Our attorneys cut right to the point in this brief,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The state not only has failed to defend their new law, but they all but conceded it is unconstitutional when they acknowledged the new section was ‘a response to, and was modeled upon’ a Texas statute on abortion, which the defendants argued was unconstitutional.
“California wants time for the courts to resolve the constitutionality of the Texas statute,” he added, “and in the meantime, they’re penalizing law-abiding firearms owners with what amounts to a political stunt by the California Legislature. Constitutional rights are not now, and never have been, pawns in a game of political one-upmanship, yet this California statute clearly is treating the First Amendment right to redress of grievance as nothing more than a political football.
“The statute in question is a childish effort to punish Golden State gun owners for the adoption of a law in Texas that California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom don’t like,” Gottlieb noted. “We’re not interested in their snit with Texas lawmakers, and California’s millions of law-abiding gun owners should not be held captive nor effectively silenced in their efforts to challenge gun control laws in California, which have nothing to do with California’s dispute with Texas.”