Appeals court says judge had no authority on D.C. gun case

WASHINGTON — A lawsuit over the District of Columbia’s strict gun law hit a speed bump Tuesday when an appeals court ruled that a federal judge who halted the law’s enforcement didn’t have authority to rule on the case.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. overstepped his authority by ruling. The decision sets up the case for another round of legal wrangling.

Writing for the threejudge panel, Judge David B. Sentelle said Scullin had not been specifically assigned the case, though he had been assigned an earlier, related case. Sentelle wrote that the fact that Scullin had ruled in the newer case was “quite understandable.” Scullin, a New York judge, was given authority to oversee a handful of cases in Washington. Those included one involving the city’s gun law, but Scullin was not specifically given authority to oversee the follow-up case.

“We realize that we are undoing the work of litigation to date, but we have no choice,” Sentelle wrote for the court in a five-page opinion.

The case will now be reassigned to a new judge so the legal challenge can continue, said Alan Gura, a lawyer for the group challenging the law. The ruling will have no effect on the current state of gun laws in the city, Gura said, because Scullin’s ruling halting the law’s enforcement had been itself been put on hold by the appeals court. The city’s law currently requires that to carry a gun a person must show a “good reason to fear injury to his or her person or property” or another “proper reason for carrying a pistol.”

The first issue the new judge will have to decide, as Scullin did, is whether enforcement of the law should be halted while lit- igation continues, Gura said.

The district’s attorney general, Karl A. Racine, said the ruling was “good news for public safety in the District of Columbia.”

“This ruling increases the likelih ood that the case will be heard before a judge from our community — something that we have argued is crucial to understanding the public-safety issues at stake,” said Racine, whose office is defending the city’s gun law.