Supreme Court Won’t Hear Challenge to Maryland’s AR-15 Rifle Ban

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on May 15, 2024. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)

The Supreme Court refused on May 20 to take up a challenge to Maryland’s law that bans so-called assault weapons such as the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

The ruling leaves the prohibition against such weapons in place in the state for the time being.

Litigation over the Maryland law is continuing, and the matter could find its way to the Supreme Court again in the future.

The case comes after the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022 that there is a constitutional right to bear firearms in public for self-defense. The court also held that gun restrictions must be deeply rooted in U.S. history if they are to survive constitutional scrutiny.

The Bruen decision has spurred challenges to gun laws nationwide. At the same time, several states are resisting the ruling and have doubled down on gun restrictions.

The petition for certiorari, or review, in Bianchi v. Brown, was denied by the justices on May 20 in an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The court did not provide reasons for the decision. At least four of the nine justices must vote to grant the petition for the case to move forward to the oral argument stage.

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The 2013 Maryland law forbids so-called assault weapons such as the AR-15 rifle, which was used in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

The law was targeted in previous litigation and upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, but after the Bruen ruling, another group of plaintiffs filed a fresh lawsuit and the Supreme Court directed the circuit court to reexamine the issue. The circuit court has not yet issued a ruling even though it has been considering the case for nearly two years.

In this case, the plaintiffs decided to bypass the circuit court before a judgment was rendered and asked the Supreme Court to weigh in directly.

Called a petition for certiorari before judgment, the Supreme Court rarely grants such appeals.

In the petition filed with the high court, petitioners argued that the Maryland law was arbitrary, saying the state “tendentiously deems scores of common semiautomatic rifle models ‘assault weapons’ and bans them outright.”

“Maryland dubs a semiautomatic firearm that possesses the prohibited features an ‘assault weapon,’ but that is nothing more than [an] argument advanced by a political slogan in the guise of a definition. As even anti-gun partisans have admitted, ‘assault weapon’ is a political term designed to exploit ‘the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semiautomatic’ firearms,” the petition states, quoting a reference work.

The firearms that Maryland calls “assault weapons” are mechanically indistinguishable from other semiautomatic firearms, which “no one disputes are exceedingly common and fully protected by the Second Amendment,” the petition states. Such weapons are not fully automatic machine guns, which continue firing until the magazine is emptied as long as the trigger is depressed, according to the petition.

Maryland law criminalizes the sale, transfer, or possession of popular weapons on “a list of 45 enumerated rifle types, including AR-15s,” the petition states.

“If an ordinary, law-abiding citizen keeps or bears a rifle banned by Maryland, [state officials] may seize and dispose of that arm. Moreover, any ordinary, law-abiding citizen who possesses such a rifle commits a criminal offense and is subject to severe sanctions, including imprisonment for up to three years for the first offense,” the petition reads.

The ruling in Bianchi v. Brown comes after the Supreme Court in 2023 rejected an attempt to stop an Illinois ban on assault weapons from taking effect.

Other cases

Also on May 20, the Supreme Court turned away an emergency application in Srour v. City of New York.

A New York City resident had asked the court to prevent local officials from enforcing a local gun licensing system that requires applicants wishing to acquire rifles and shotguns to demonstrate good moral character. A federal district court judge had halted the long-gun licensing scheme, but later the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stayed his order.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the application on April 4. The application was then resubmitted on April 11 to Justice Clarence Thomas, who referred it to the full court on April 30.

As with the Maryland petition, the Supreme Court rejected the application seeking to reverse the Second Circuit in an unsigned order. No justices dissented. The court gave no reasons for its decision.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is currently deliberating two other gun rights-related cases.

On Feb. 28, the justices heard Garland v. Cargill. A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives regulation issued during the Trump administration prohibits ownership of bump stocks, which replace a rifle’s standard stock. A bump stock doesn’t make any modifications to the firing components of a rifle but makes the continuous rapid fire of the weapon possible.

The regulation came into being after a gunman used bump-stock-equipped rifles in a 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.

On Nov. 7, 2023, the Supreme Court heard United States v. Rahimi, which concerns whether a federal law that bars people under domestic violence-related restraining orders from possessing firearms should be overturned.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down Section 922(g)(8) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, a 1994 law that prohibits a person who is subject to a domestic restraining order from having a gun. The circuit court determined that the law had ceased to be constitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bruen case.

Decisions in the two cases are expected by the end of June.

On April 22, the Supreme Court agreed to consider the Biden administration’s rule regulating so-called ghost guns that can be assembled at home.

“Ghost gun” is a pejorative term used by gun control advocates to describe a homemade firearm that lacks a serial number and therefore can’t be tracked by law enforcement. Although some states regulate homemade guns, gun control groups have been trying for years to ban or regulate homemade guns at the federal level but have failed to convince Congress to act.

Oral arguments in the case are likely to take place in the fall. In October 2023, the Supreme Court reinstated the rule, which lower courts had enjoined.