Linton v. Becerra

Background

Chad Jay Linton, Paul McKinley, and five nonprofit firearms-advocacy organizations sued the Attorney General and other California officials. The individual plaintiffs alleged that California denied them authorization to acquire firearms under a long-standing policy barring firearm ownership or possession by people convicted of felonies. They acknowledged convictions in other states but said those states later restored their firearm rights.

The plaintiffs alleged violations of the Second Amendment, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause. After the court declined to resolve factual disputes through a motion to dismiss, the case proceeded through discovery under an expedited schedule. The plaintiffs later amended their complaint to add Kendall Jones and moved for a preliminary injunction.

The requested injunction

The plaintiffs sought an order preventing California from enforcing Penal Code sections 29800 and 30305 against them. Section 29800 criminalizes firearm possession by a person convicted of a felony, including a conviction under the law of another state. Section 30305 criminalizes ammunition possession by a person prohibited from owning or possessing firearms.

The motion concerned the plaintiffs’ individual circumstances. Linton said Washington had set aside his guilty plea, vacated his conviction, and restored his firearm rights under Washington law, but California continued to deny him permission to buy firearms and had seized his firearms. Stewart said Arizona had set aside his felony conviction, but California continued to deny him authorization to purchase a firearm. Jones said Texas had allowed him to withdraw his guilty plea and set aside his conviction, but California denied him a certificate of eligibility to own or possess firearms and ammunition.

Legal standard

A preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy. To obtain one, a plaintiff generally must show a likelihood of success on the merits, likely irreparable harm without the injunction, that the balance of equities favors the plaintiff, and that an injunction serves the public interest. The court also described a sliding-scale approach allowing relief when a plaintiff raises serious questions requiring litigation and shows that the balance of hardships sharply favors the plaintiff. At a minimum, the plaintiff must show a fair chance of success or sufficiently serious questions for litigation.

Court’s analysis

The court treated the challenge as an as-applied constitutional challenge, meaning the plaintiffs challenged how the firearm restrictions operated in their particular circumstances rather than attacking the statutes on their face. The court stated that sections 29800 and 30305 were permissible restrictions on firearm possession by convicted felons and that the plaintiffs did not challenge the general constitutionality of those statutes.

On the merits of the plaintiffs’ particular claims, the court could not say that they were likely to succeed because the factual and legal issues were complex and disputed and the evidence was not fully developed. The court had set a discovery and summary-judgment schedule so that the constitutional claims could be decided on a complete record. Nevertheless, the court found that the plaintiffs raised serious and novel constitutional questions about California’s authority to deny firearm access based on criminal proceedings in other states. It therefore found that the first injunction factor favored the plaintiffs.

The court held, however, that the plaintiffs had not shown a likelihood of irreparable harm. Linton and Stewart waited about a year after filing the complaint before seeking an injunction, without providing a good explanation or showing that they had been unable to act sooner. Jones knew by February 2019 that California would not allow him to acquire a firearm but waited about ten months before joining the case and the injunction motion.

The court also rejected Jones’s arguments that the denial of a firearm-eligibility certificate threatened his career and professional reputation. It viewed the claimed professional harm as questionable in light of his delay and his prior career in California law enforcement. To the extent he claimed lost pay from providing training, the court said money damages would be an adequate remedy. It found the alleged reputational harm speculative.

The court additionally expressed concern that plaintiffs’ attorney had presented Jones’s addition to the case as a technical amendment that would not change the litigation, while plaintiffs later relied on Jones’s addition in seeking an injunction. The court said it was not denying the injunction on that ground, although it found that the plaintiffs’ tactics did not help their request.

Disposition

The court denied plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. The order did not finally resolve the constitutional claims; it denied interim relief because the plaintiffs failed to establish likely irreparable harm, despite raising serious questions warranting further litigation.