The Mercury News

Supreme Court declines to take up cases regarding Second Amendment.

- By Jamie Ehrlich

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up several cases regarding the scope of the Second Amendment.

Despite a low hurdle for the right-leaning Supreme Court, the justices turned down petitions from 10 challenges to state laws establishe­d to limit the availabili­ty and accessibil­ity of some firearms and when they can be carried in public.

It’s been over a decade since 2008’s landmark 5-4 ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller that held the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms at home for self-defense. Except for a follow-up decision two years later, the court has not weighed in on Second Amendment rights significan­tly again.

In April, the court also declined to weigh in on the issue.

Five of the 10 cases the court declined to look at asked the justices to determine whether the Second Amendment allows the government to restrict the ability of citizens to carry a firearm outside the home to those with “good cause” or “justifiabl­e need” to do so. Two of the cases were high-profile challenges to state laws involving bans on certain semiautoma­tic firearms and high capacity magazines, one from Illinois and one from Massachuse­tts. The remaining three cases had a narrower scope, but none of the 10 will be argued before the justices.

Jacob Charles, the executive director of the Center for Firearms Law at Duke Law School, said the court’s decision to deny all of the pending Second Amendment petitions came as a surprise.

“The petitions denied today presented some of the biggest open questions in Second Amendment law, including what types of weapons the Constituti­on protects and how and whether the right extends outside the home,” Charles said. “For now, it appears that a majority of the Court is content to let these issues be sorted out by the lower courts.”

Three of the nine justices have been vocal in recent years about their desire for the court to take up a Second Amendment case.

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