August 16, 2023
BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a federal lawsuit challenging Minnesota’s ban on firearms carry by young adults has filed a response brief to the state’s appeal of SAF’s court victory. The case is known as Worth v. Harrington.
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, 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 was originally filed in June 2021 and is now before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. At issue is whether Minnesota’s ban on firearms carriage by young adults in the 18-to-20-year-old age group violates the Second Amendment. Earlier this year, U. S. District Judge Kathleen Menendez ruled the Minnesota law preventing young adults from obtaining carry permits is unconstitutional.
“The state is stubbornly clinging to the unconstitutional law, and our response is quite clear,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “We expect to win again at the Appeals Court level.”
“Judge Menendez made the right call in this case almost five months ago,” concurred SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut. “We remind the court that the Second Amendment refers to a right ‘of the people’ without mentioning age, and certainly young adults fall within the definition of ‘the people’ ever since they’ve been allowed to vote, and generations before that when they were considered part of the militia, and have been accepted into the military.”
SAF’s brief also reminds the court that the Second Amendment extends to all Americans, and this was established in the 2008 Heller ruling, and reiterated in the Bruen ruling in 2022.