Supreme Court Overturns Ruling on Pennsylvania Law Allowing People Between 18 and 21 to Carrying Guns

By Jack Phillips

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a lower court’s ruling that had allowed residents in Pennsylvania between the ages of 18 and 21 to carry firearms in public during states of emergencies, telling a federal appeals court to reconsider the case.

The Supreme Court did not explain its ruling, and there were no dissents. The two-sentence ruling by the high court signaled that the justices would not take up an appeal by Pennsylvania state officials, ordering that the issue be remanded back to the lower courts.

Earlier in 2024, the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the state law in a divided, 2–1 decision. The majority of judges ruled that Pennsylvania wasn’t able to show that the age-21 requirement kept up with historic traditions or norms, a legal test that was established for gun-related laws under the Supreme Court’s landmark New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision in June 2022.

Under the Uniform Firearms Act, Pennsylvania bars individuals aged 18 to 20 from openly carrying guns in public during a declared state of emergency.

In striking down a 100-year-old New York gun law that restricted places where people can carry firearms, the Supreme Court in June 2022 had established that the state law was unconstitutional because there were not any similar laws in the United States when the Second Amendment was ratified.

A lawsuit was filed against the state over a law that barred people aged between 18 and 21 from openly carrying guns during states of emergency, with lawyers for the petitioners saying that the state law did not adhere to U.S. traditions and norms.

In the suit, two gun rights organizations are challenging the Pennsylvania law along with three people under the age of 21 when the petition was filed in 2020. They called on the Supreme Court to reject arguments from the state without ordering any reconsideration from the lower courts and argued that lower courts have a “broad agreement” on the 3rd Circuit Court’s decision to overturn the state law.

The appeals court, in overturning the law, said that there is a “conspicuously sparse record of state regulations on 18-to-20-year-olds at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification,” adding that in 1792, there was actually a law passed in Congress mandating “all able-bodied men to enroll in the militia and to arm themselves upon turning 18.”

“That young adults had to serve in the militia indicates that founding-era lawmakers believed those youth could, and indeed should, keep and bear arms,” the appeals court said.

In response, the state of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Christopher Paris petitioned the appeals court’s decision to the Supreme Court in late April.

Pennsylvania officials argued in court papers that the appeals court went too far in their decision and misinterpreted the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision and pointed to a concurring opinion penned by Justice Samuel Alito

Alito had “explained in his Bruen concurrence that this Court did not invalidate existing age restrictions, highlighting that federal law bars the sale of handguns to under-21-year-olds,” state officials wrote.

“But the Court of Appeals interpreted Bruen to do just that, holding that Pennsylvania could not prohibit 18-to-20-year-olds from openly carrying firearms during a state of emergency,“ they added. ”The panel majority believed Bruen required Pennsylvania to produce a regulatory twin from the Founding era imposing similar restrictions on the freedom of 18-to-20-year-olds to prevail.”

However, the gun-rights groups and plaintiffs responded to the state by agreeing with the 3rd Circuit’s decision, noting that the court’s “conclusion that the Second Amendment’s text and history require holding special restrictions on the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds unconstitutional resulted from a faithful application of this Court’s precedents,” they wrote to the Supreme Court in a filing earlier this year.

The appeals court ruling, meanwhile, cited the Supreme Court’s order in June of this year that upheld a federal ban barring individuals from owning firearms if they are under domestic violence-related orders. That ruling, United States v. Rahimi,  overturned the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision in 2023 that invalidated a federal law blocking a person with a civil domestic violence restraining order from owning a firearm.