BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys representing the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a federal lawsuit challenging New York Senate Bill S51001 have filed a memorandum supporting their motion for summary judgment in a case known as Christian v. Chiumento.
SAF is joined by the Firearms Policy Coalition and a private citizen, Brett Christian. They are represented by attorneys David H. Thompson and Peter A. Patterson with Cooper & Kirk in Washington, DC and Nicolas J. Rotsko at Fluet in Tysons, VA. The memorandum was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
In their memorandum, SAF’s attorneys note that soon after the 2022 Bruen ruling, striking down New York’s unconstitutional concealed carry law, state lawmakers “replaced one unconstitutional licensing scheme with another and implemented expansive new criminal laws barring firearm carry in so-called ‘sensitive locations.’”
“Rather than acquiesce to the high court’s ruling,” SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb recalled, “New York adopted this new ‘sensitive places ban’ in defiance. S51001 effectively bars New Yorkers from carrying everywhere except ‘probably some streets.’ The state is pushing in an effort to see just how far it can go, and get away with it. That simply cannot be allowed.”
“Under Bruen,” noted SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut, “New York must now show that its new ‘sensitive places’ ban is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation, and they can’t meet that burden because no such history exists. There are no analogous regulations supporting the state’s position.”
Back in December, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals struck down New York’s requirement that private property owners post signs allowing concealed carry on property open to the public. The 261-page decision dealt with several separate challenges of the new law.