“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined a petition to hear an appeal in a case challenging California’s strict concealed carry permitting practices – leaving two justices to cry foul.
The nation’s highest court swatted away a chance to let lower courts know it meant what it said in its 2008 Heller decision over gun rights issues by taking the case of a San Diego man, Edward Peruta, whose saga to obtain a permit in that county started in 2009 and has been in federal court ever since his subsequent refusal because he could not show “good cause” as to why he felt the need to carry a gun.
Submitted to the high court in January, Peruta has been distributed for conference by the justices 12 times, needing just four of the jurists to agree to accept the case for review. However, even with the addition of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in recent weeks, the petition was denied on Monday.
Gorsuch did, nonetheless, join conservative bulwark Justice Clarence Thomas, in a scathing eight-page dissent, springing to the defense of the merits of the Peruta case.
Thomas argued the court should have taken Peruta, saying the logic used by an en banc panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit to overturn an earlier pro-gun ruling was “indefensible, and the petition raises important questions that this Court should address.”
The dissenting Justices contrasting Peruta with Heller, in which the court, in an opinion penned by the late Justice Antoin Scalia, spoke to the right to carry firearms in general.
“I find it extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen,” said Thomas.
Pointing out that 26 states had supported the Peruta challenge, and that a host of lower courts have issued opinions on both sides of the issue, Thomas held that the nation’s high court dropped the ball by not settling the matter.
“Even if other Members of the Court do not agree that the Second Amendment likely protects a right to public carry, the time has come for the Court to answer this important question definitively,” he said. “Hence, I do not see much value in waiting for additional courts to weigh in, especially when constitutional rights are at stake.”
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by Chris Eger
