BELLEVUE, WA – Attorneys for the Second Amendment Foundation and its partners in a challenge of an Alameda County, California zoning ordinance that effectively bans gun stores have filed a writ of certiorari seeking review by the Supreme Court of the United States.
The lawsuit was against an Alameda County ordinance that prohibits gun stores from being located within 500 feet of a residential zone. Plaintiffs won before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but that was reversed following an en banc hearing before the full appeals court. Now the case is being appealed to the high court.
SAF is joined in the case by the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees, the Calguns Foundation, Inc., and three businessmen, John Teixeira, Steve Nobriga and Gary Gamaza. They are represented by Virginia attorney Alan Gura and California attorney Don Kilmer.
“You simply cannot allow local governments to ignore the Second Amendment because they don’t like how the Supreme Court has ruled on the amendment twice in the past ten years,” noted SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “You shouldn’t be able to zone the Second Amendment out of the Bill of Rights.”
“Local neighbors who live eight lanes across an interstate and the anti-rights politicians that cater to them can’t redline gun stores and the right to buy arms out of existence,” noted Gene Hoffman, chairman of the Calguns Foundation. “Since this case was filed multiple local city and county governments have used unconstitutional zoning laws to stop new gun stores from opening and close down existing gun stores. If this was a book store or an abortion clinic, the Ninth Circuit would not have hesitated in striking this zoning regulation unanimously.”
“The Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment was not a second-class right, but lower courts are ignoring that and holding otherwise—and so far, they’ve been getting away with it. We hope this case gets individual liberty back on track,” added Brandon Combs, executive vice president of the California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees.
“The federal courts exist, in part, to protect fundamental rights that might not be popular in certain jurisdictions,” noted California attorney Don Kilmer, who represents the plaintiffs. “Today, in the Ninth Circuit, those are gun rights. Tomorrow, who knows? One question presented by this case is whether our rights are subject to only one Constitution, or do those rights change from state to state?”