Utah Attorney General’s Office Joins Amicus to Protect Second Amendment Rights

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH-Attorney General Sean D. Reyes joined 17 States on an amicus brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in Gray v. Jennings. The filing, led by the State of West Virginia, petitions the nation's high court to grant this Second Amendment case in order to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans around the country to keep and bear arms.

In 2022, the State of Delaware passed HB 450, which essentially prohibited "assault weapons" and high-capacity magazines within its jurisdiction. The law also targeted those who would transport or import these weapons into the state. Both the district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit did not issue a preliminary injunction on the law due to the faulty opinion that the enacted policies did not serve as per se irreparable harms on the affected parties, leading to this petition at the U.S. Supreme Court. The coalition of States have asserted that it is time for the Second Amendment to be uniformly applied in every state, circuit, and matter; and that this critical section of the U.S. Bill of Rights should not be relegated to a lower rank of importance when compared to the other amendments.

In their brief, the attorneys general argue that the Court should grant the petition because an "infringement of the Second Amendment Right constitutes per se irreparable injury," and because "individuals across the country have been deprived of their Constitutional rights."

As the coalition writes, "Some time ago, the Court reminded us of a basic truth: the Second Amendment is not 'a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.' (McDonald v City of Chicago) … But while McDonald's admonition is now more than a decade old, and although the Court has repeated it from time to time, courts below are still struggling to obey it. Courts [that] uphold local bans on so-called assault weapons and large-capacity magazines have seemed especially prone to 'contorting' traditional constitutional principles and subordinating Second Amendment interests. In those courts, at least, the Second Amendment has become uniquely 'subject to the whimsical discretion of federal judges.'"

Joining Utah and West Virginia on this brief were the States of Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming.

Read the brief here.