Why Is This Appeals Court Sitting On Its Decision About New Jersey Carry Laws?

The wheels of justice grind slowly, but for one legal challenge to some of New Jersey’s gun laws they seem to have ground to a halt altogether.

The cases Koons & Siegel v. Platkin were filed in response to New Jersey’s Bruen response bill, which included a host of newly designated “sensitive places” where lawful carry is off limits. As Second Amendment attorney Steve Halbrook writes at Reason, a U.S. District Court judge originally granted a partial stay of the laws in May, 2023. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin appealed that decision to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals soon afterwards, and the appellate court issued a split decision in June of that year; granting the motion to stay Bumb’s injunction in part and denying it in part. 

The Third Circuit then held oral argument promptly on October 25, 2023.  For the two consolidated cases, the argument lasted two hours and forty minutes before Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, Judge David Porter, and Judge Cindy Chung.  And that’s where the trail ends.  Almost two years have passed without a decision.

To be sure, the state submitted countless pages of historical laws into the record.  But they are all either not analogues, because they do not concern the peaceable carrying of arms, or were enacted toward the end of the nineteenth century, too late to be relevant to the original public understanding of the Second Amendment.  The judges and their clerks need not expend too much time reviewing them.

Justice Clarence Thomas has several times ended a dissent from denial of cert with words like the following, in this instance from Snope v. Brown: “I doubt we would sit idly by if lower courts were to so subvert our precedents involving any other constitutional right. Until we are vigilant in enforcing it, the right to bear arms will remain ‘a second-class right.'”  The same logic applies when lower courts unduly extend deciding constitutional claims.

It shouldn’t take 642 days to issue a decision, even if the panel has to take a look at each and every challenged “sensitive place” and weigh the state’s evidence for its historical basis within the national tradition of gun ownership. Sadly, though Koons doesn’t even have the distinction of having the longest stretch of time between oral arguments and a final decision by an appellate court at the moment. According to the Firearms Policy Coalition’s invaluable Gun Case Tracker, that distinction belongs to two cases pending in the Ninth Circuit; Boland v. Bonta and Renner v. Bonta, which both challenge the state’s handgun roster, and which have been sitting awaiting judgement for 705 days.  

Justice delayed is justice denied, and in the case of Koons & Siegel v. Platkin tens of thousands of New Jersey residents are being denied their right to carry in a wide variety of places that are sensitive in name only; public gatherings, demonstrations, events requiring a government permit, zoos, parks, beaches, recreational areas, libraries, and museums, to name just a few. 

Failure to abide by these laws is a serious offense, and keeping these prohibitions in place despite Bumb’s injunction needlessly puts gun owners who possess a valid carry license at greater risk of harm; either from prosecutors if they choose to carry in these “gun-free zones” or from violent criminals if they choose to abide by the law. Unfortunately, there’s no mechanism to compel courts to render verdicts in a timely manner, not matter how vitally important the questions posed by litigants, and we could be waiting another 642 days if the appellate court decides it wants to hold off on a decision until then. 

Editor’s Note: Radical judges are doing everything they can to hamstring our Second Amendment rights.

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