Kramer Levin Files Amicus Brief for Everytown for Gun Safety in Support of Florida Age-Based Firearms Restrictions

On Jan. 28, 2020, Kramer Levin filed an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida on behalf of its client Everytown for Gun Safety in NRA v. Swearingen, a case involving a Second Amendment challenge to Florida’s age-based restrictions on the sale or transfer of firearms. Everytown is the nation’s largest gun violence prevention organization, with nearly six million supporters in all fifty states fighting for public safety measures that respect the Second Amendment and help save lives.

Our brief supports the position of the Florida Attorney General’s office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which are defending a recently amended Florida statute restricting licensed firearm importers, manufacturers, or dealers from selling or transferring firearms, with a number of exceptions, to persons under the age of 21. Plaintiffs in the case, who seek declaratory and injunctive relief, claim that the law: (1) unconstitutionally infringes on the Second Amendment rights of persons between the ages of 18 and 21, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution; and (2) unconstitutionally violates their equal protection rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Plaintiffs’ challenge to the statute is one of several lawsuits that have been filed in federal and state courts around the country, arguing that similar statutes regulating the sale or transfer of firearms to persons under 21 years old are unconstitutional.  

Our brief provides the Court with historical analysis demonstrating that, for at least 150 years, the States have enacted, and courts of have upheld, restrictions on the transfer of firearms to persons under 21 years of age. Specifically, we discuss why the relevant time period for purposes of the historical analysis begins in 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, and detail specific nineteenth century state laws imposing restrictions on minors’ access to firearms. Under the applicable legal framework for evaluating Second Amendment challenges to firearms regulations, the Florida statute thus regulates conduct outside the scope of the Second Amendment, and is not unconstitutional. 

In addition, even were the conduct at issue protected by the Second Amendment, the statute is reasonably tailored to accomplish Florida’s important interest in promoting public safety, particularly given the problem of young adults, including the 19-year-old who committed the Feb. 14, 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, purchasing firearms and subsequently committing gun-related and other violent offenses. Moreover, the challenged law does not impermissibly interfere with a fundamental right and age is not a suspect classification under the Equal Protection Clause, and the Florida legislature had a rational basis for imposing age restrictions on firearm sales.

Read the brief here.