The high court also told a federal appeals court to reconsider the case.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 15 vacated a lower court’s ruling that allowed adults in Pennsylvania younger than the age of 21 to carry firearms in public during states of emergency, 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 decision by the high court indicated that the justices would not take up the appeal by Pennsylvania state officials who sought to overturn the lower court’s ruling. Instead, the justices ordered the case to be remanded back to the lower courts, and it vacated the appeals court decision that had blocked the state law.
Under the Uniform Firearms Act, Pennsylvania bars individuals ages 18 to 20 from openly carrying guns in public during a declared state of emergency. A lawsuit was filed against the state over the law, with lawyers for the petitioners saying the state law did not adhere to U.S. traditions and norms under the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
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.
Earlier this year, the Philadelphia-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit blocked that law in a divided 2–1 decision. The majority of judges ruled that Pennsylvania wasn’t able to show that the age-21 requirement met the Bruen legal test and that it wasn’t in keeping with those U.S. traditions.
In their lawsuit, two gun rights organizations are challenging the Pennsylvania law along with three people younger than age 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 Third Circuit’s decision to overturn the state law.
