CA: Nguyen v Bonta Stay issued at Ninth Circuit April 24, 2024

On March 11, 2024, Judge William Q. Hayes of the United States District Court, Southern District of California, granted a summary judgement in the case of Nguyen V. Bonta. The case is a challenge to California's one gun a month law. Judge Hayes ruled the law violated the text of the Second Amendment and there were no reasonable analogies in the relevant legal history of the United States.

Judge Hayes granted one month for an appeal to be filed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case was sent to a three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. The administrative panel consists of judges Bennett, R. Nelson, and Miller. All three judges were appointed by President Trump.

On April 24, 2024, the panel granted a stay of Judge Hayes summary judgement to the state of California. Judge Nelson dissented.  Here is Judge Nelson's dissent.  From Nguyen v Bonta Courtlister:

I agree to expedite this appeal. I would deny the stay pending appeal because Defendants are not likely to prevail on the merits. “[W]hen the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 579 U.S. 1, 17(2022). As the district court properly concluded, the right to buy a firearm is covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment. Moreover, under Bruen, no historical analogue permits California’s regulation. California points mainly to historical regulations of the sale, storage and transport of gun powder—the same analogues California cites to support almost all of its onerous gun restrictions. As the district court properly found, these are not sufficiently close analogues under Bruen. And the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the equitable factors do not warrant an injunction where Plaintiffs’ Second Amendment rights are violated. I respectfully dissent.

A different three judge panel will hear the merits of the case. It is not known who will be on the three judge merits panel. The merits panel may or may not extend the stay placed on the case by the administrative panel. The Ninth Circuit has not been friendly to Second Amendment cases. Rulings by three judge panels on the Ninth Circuit, favorable to the Second Amendment as a fundamental right, have all been taken up en banc by the entire court and reversed. As President Trump was able to appoint several judges to the Ninth Circuit, the circuit is not as far left as it used to be. Judge Bumatay went so far as to point out the extreme bias in 2023. From a previous AmmoLand article, Judge Bumatay, dissenting:

 

If the protection of the people’s fundamental rights wasn’t such a serious matter, our court’s attitude toward the Second Amendment would be laughably absurd. For years, this court has shot down every Second Amendment challenge to a state regulation of firearms—effectively granting a blank check for governments to restrict firearms in any way they pleased. We got here by concocting a two-part tiers-of-scrutiny test, which permitted judges to interest-balance away the Second Amendment guarantee. But this approach was “nothing more than a judicial sleight-of-hand, . . .feign[ing] respect to the right to keep and bear arms” but never enforcing its protection. 1087, 1147 (9th Cir. 2021) (en banc) (Bumatay, J., dissenting).

Judge Bumatay's dissent runs for thirty pages. It shows the blatant disregard of a Ninth Circuit majority of judges who wish to impost their policy on the Supreme Court.

Analysis:

This case should be a slam dunk, but at the Ninth Circuit, the Second Amendment is not given as much attention as a bastard child, let alone a fundamental member of the Bill of Rights. The circuits who are defying the Supreme Court are playing a dangerous waiting game. If they can just wait until a conservative justice dies, or a leftist congress packs the court, or President Biden declares martial law.... or something, anything, to remove the possibility of the Second Amendment being given the respect it so legally deserves. Many of the judges on the Ninth Circuit hold the ability to disarm people they disagree with close to their hearts. They are dictators in black robes.

©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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