Carralero v. Bonta – Do It For The Caselaw

Holding: The court denied the petitions for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc, leaving the panel's decision that upheld most of the challenged sensitive place restrictions in place.
Standard: Bruen step two
Vote: The panel voted to deny the petition for panel rehearing. The petition for rehearing en banc failed to receive a majority of the votes of the nonrecused active judges.
Practical effect: The denial of rehearing leaves the panel's decision intact, allowing California and Hawaii to enforce broad restrictions on firearm carry in public and private spaces, effectively limiting the right to carry to streets and sidewalks in many areas.

The Ninth Circuit panel denied petitions for rehearing in a Second Amendment case involving California and Hawaii gun carry restrictions. Dissenting judges argued the panel failed to apply proper historical standards and effectively nullified the right to bear arms in public.

Background

Plaintiffs challenged California and Hawaii laws that prohibited carrying firearms in numerous locations and flipped the default rule for private property to require affirmative permission for carry. The district court had preliminarily enjoined many of these provisions, but the Ninth Circuit panel reversed most of those injunctions, allowing the restrictions to take effect.

The court’s reasoning

The panel applied the Bruen text-history-and-tradition test but was criticized for relying on outlier historical laws, such as an anti-poaching ordinance and a Reconstruction-era Black Code, to justify the private property default rule. The dissent argued the panel improperly abstracted principles from unrelated laws and redefined historical locations to bypass the lack of Founding-era traditions for modern sensitive places.

The dissent

the panel failed to apply the proper standards for evaluating Second Amendment challenges, and that, in doing so, the panel largely vitiated the right to bear commonly used arms in public

Judge Collins

What it means going forward

The denial of rehearing leaves the panel’s decision intact, allowing California and Hawaii to enforce broad restrictions on firearm carry in public and private spaces, effectively limiting the right to carry to streets and sidewalks in many areas.