Worth v. Harrington

Background

Minnesota law requires people who are not law-enforcement officers to obtain a permit to carry a pistol in public, subject to listed exceptions. The law also requires permit applicants to be at least 21 years old. Carrying a pistol in public without a permit is a gross misdemeanor, and a second or later conviction is a felony.

Kristin Worth, Austin Dye, and Axel Anderson were older than 18 but under 21. The opinion states that, apart from the age requirement, they appeared eligible for permits and wanted to carry pistols for self-defense. The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Second Amendment Foundation, and Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., also sued on behalf of members in the same age group.

The defendants were John Harrington, Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, and Don Lorge, Troy Wolbersen, and Dan Starry, identified as the sheriffs of Mille Lacs, Douglas, and Washington Counties, respectively, each sued in an official capacity.

Second Amendment analysis

The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment, a procedure used when the court determines that no genuine dispute over a material fact requires a trial and that one side is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

The court applied the framework adopted by the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. First, it asked whether the Second Amendment’s text covers the proposed conduct. The court concluded that publicly carrying a handgun for self-defense is covered and that the amendment’s reference to “the people” includes adults who are 18 to 20 years old.

Second, the court required the defendants to identify a relevant historical tradition supporting Minnesota’s age restriction. The court examined the proposed historical comparisons, including rules at certain colleges, municipal ordinances regulating the firing of guns, and regulations from the period surrounding the Fourteenth Amendment. It concluded that these examples did not impose a sufficiently similar burden for a sufficiently similar reason. The court therefore held that the defendants had not shown that Minnesota’s 21-year minimum age for obtaining a public-carry permit was consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The court noted that Minnesota had presented policy and expert evidence concerning public safety, young adults’ development, violence, accidents, firearm theft, and suicide. But the court concluded that Bruen did not permit the court to balance those modern policy interests against the Second Amendment right.

Relief and rulings on the motions

The court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment in part. It declared that Minn. Stat. § 624.714, subd. 2(b)(2), which requires a person to be at least 21 to receive a permit to publicly carry a handgun, violates the Second and Fourteenth Amendments as applied to individuals 18 to 20 years old. It enjoined the defendants from enforcing that minimum-age requirement against the individual plaintiffs and otherwise-qualified 18-to-20-year-olds.

The court did not order the broader relief requested in the complaint. In particular, it did not decide that Minnesota’s separate requirement to obtain a permit before carrying a handgun in public was unconstitutional. The court stated that otherwise-qualified applicants at least 18 years old would remain subject to the permitting process once the age restriction was no longer enforced against them.

The court denied Commissioner Harrington’s motion for summary judgment and denied Sheriffs Lorge, Wolbersen, and Starry’s motion for summary judgment. The court also rejected arguments that the plaintiffs lacked standing or that the commissioner and sheriffs were improper defendants. It concluded that the plaintiffs faced a credible threat of prosecution if they carried publicly without permits and that each defendant had a sufficient connection to enforcement of the challenged age requirement for prospective declaratory and injunctive relief.