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

On Jan. 3, 2020, Kramer Levin submitted an amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California on behalf of its client Everytown for Gun Safety in Jones v. Becerra, a case involving a Second Amendment challenge to California’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 California Attorney General’s office, which is defending a recently amended California statute restricting licensed firearm dealers from selling or transferring firearms, with a number of exceptions, to persons under the age of 21. Plaintiffs in the case, who seek a preliminary injunction preventing California from enforcing the statute, claim that the law 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. 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. Under the applicable legal framework for evaluating Second Amendment challenges to firearms regulations, the California 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 California’s important interest in promoting public safety and reducing gun violence.

Read the brief here.