Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Supreme Court Asked To Hear Case On Concealed Carry Across State Lines

[Wikimedia Commons/Public/Sunira Moses, CC BY 3.0, <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en>]

A petition asking the Supreme Court to hear a Second Amendment case from a trucker argued that Minnesota’s refusal to honor out-of-state concealed carry permits violated the constitutional provision protecting the right to keep and bear arms.

Liberty Justice Center first filed the lawsuit in January 2025 against Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson over the state’s refusal to recognize the out-of-state permits of two truck drivers, David A. McCoy II and Jeffrey A. Johnson Sr. In the petition filed Aug. 24, the group claimed Minnesota’s approach was turning the Second Amendment into a “second-class right.”

“In the Eighth Circuit’s view, an individual’s Second Amendment rights are confined to the borders of the state of where he holds a firearm permit,” the petition said. “No matter how many times an ordinary law-abiding citizen proves his worth through a state’s firearm licensing process, another state can force him to do it again before he can exercise his ‘constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense.’”

The case was the fifth major Second Amendment case the Supreme Court was asked to hear in its upcoming term. The high court agreed to hear Viramontes v. Cook County in June, taking up a Second Amendment challenge to a ban on modern semiautomatic firearms passed by the Illinois locality.

The Supreme Court also considered taking up Duncan v. Bonta, a challenge to California’s ban on magazines holding more than ten rounds for over 20 conferences, a record. Petitions were filed asking the court to hear cases involving lawsuits against firearms manufacturers over a shooting, and a Second Amendment challenge to Maine’s mandatory waiting period for firearms purchases.

In June, the Supreme Court narrowed the applicability of a federal law prohibiting users of marijuana roughly a week before it issued its ruling in Wolford v. Lopez, a ruling that struck down Hawaii’s “vampire rule” targeting concealed carry.

“This regime hobbles what the Second Amendment protects: the right of Americans to carry arms for self-defense as they go about their daily lives,” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the opinion. “We hold that the law is unconstitutional.”