Justices to consider ‘ghost guns’ case
Court rejects challenge to age-based voting rules
WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide if the Biden administration can regulate “ghost guns,” but declined to decide whether states that automatically let senior citizens vote by mail must let younger voters do the same, an issue that could affect millions of voters.
The court on Monday agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower court’s rejection of ghost gun regulation, which would require manufacturers of the untraceable weapon kits to conduct background checks on customers and mark their products with serial numbers.
That move follows the high court’s decision last August to allow the rule to remain in effect while it’s being challenged.
It’s the first gun control case added to the Supreme Court’s docket for its next term, and it will come after the justices decide, before adjourning for the summer, whether domestic abusers can be banned from owning guns and whether bump stocks are illegal.
Ghost gun kits allow people to purchase parts that can be built into a weapon without the usual regulations that come with an assembled gun. President Joe Biden in 2022 required companies selling the do-it-yourself kits to adhere to the same rules as other gun makers, such as keeping records that help police trace the weapons.
“These guns are weapons of choice for many criminals,” Biden said. “We are going to do everything we can to deprive them of that choice and, when we find them, put them in jail for a long, long time.”
A panel of three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in November that the administration was trying to rewrite gun control laws.
“Only Congress may make the deliberate and reasoned decision to enact new or modified legislation regarding firearms,” the panel said in a decision written by U.S. Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt.
The Biden administration told the Supreme Court its regulation was consistent with the “plain meaning” of existing laws.
The 5th Circuit’s interpretation, the Justice Department said, would make it “trivially easy” to circumvent the law. That would lead to a “flood of untraceable ghost guns,” posing a grave threat to public safety and thwarting law enforcement efforts to solve crimes, according to the department.
The law’s definition of “firearm” includes “any weapon (including a starter gun) which will or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive,” as well as “the frame or receiver of any such weapon.”
Those suing − gun owners, advocacy groups and companies that make or distribute the products – argued that the definition has long been interpreted to describe “actual” or “finished” frames and receivers.
Gun control advocates say the kits are a dangerous loophole and point out that police frequently find the weapons at crime scenes.
Nearly 14,000 suspected ghost guns were recovered by law enforcement and reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in just five months last year, according to the Justice Department.
Polymer80, one of the manufacturers challenging the regulation, is responsible for more than 80% of ghost guns recovered at crime scenes in recent years, the department said.
Lawyers for Polymer80 and other companies that sued said the regulation has put them “on the brink of economic destruction” and will soon destroy “an entire field of traditionally lawful Second Amendment business activity” unless it’s repealed.
Supreme Court declines to hear challenge to vote-by-mail rules
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court declined to decide if vote-by-mail restrictions discriminate in some states.
Mail-in balloting has become a partisan debate as Democrats champion it as a way to increase turnout and Republicans
argue it increases the risk of voter fraud.
Documented cases of voter fraud, including those related to voting by mail, are rare. But while uncommon, fraud seems to occur more often with mailedin votes than with in-person voting, according to the MIT Election Data & Science Lab.
Seven states – Texas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee – allow older voters to request an absentee ballot for any reason but let others do so only under certain circumstances.
The court on Monday rejected a challenge to these rules brought by three voters in Texas, just as it rejected a similar challenge in 2021 to Indiana’s voting rules. It also twice declined to hear earlier versions of the Texas suit brought by the Texas Democratic Party during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The challengers argued that the unequal treatment of voters is age-based discrimination prohibited by the 26th Amendment.
Ratified in 1971 to lower the voting age to 18, the amendment says the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of age.”
“Whatever voting rights a state grants to people aged 65-and-over, it must also grant to people under 65,” the Texas voters told the Supreme Court in their unsuccessful appeal.
They wanted the court to overturn an appeals court ruling that Texas’ rules are allowed because making it easier for some people to vote doesn’t make it harder for others to do so. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also said that the right to vote when the 26th Amendment was ratified did not include the right to vote by mail.
Most states now either mail ballots to all voters or allow all residents to request an absentee ballot for any reason.
But Texas said it has taken a different route to protect voting integrity while recognizing that older voters may have limited mobility or other reasons that make it harder for them to vote in person.
The state said allowing anyone to request a mail-in ballot would increase the risk of voter fraud.