The Maryland District Court has just handed down a decision [pdf] in the Woollard case granting the plaintiff summary judgement. You can catch up on the background here. The meat of the decision is that Maryland’s standard for issuance of carry permits is too strict and arbitrary to pass constitutional muster.
From the opinion:
The Court finds that Maryland’s requirement of a “good and substantial reason” for issuance of a handgun permit is insufficiently tailored to the State’s interest in public safety and crime prevention. The law impermissibly infringes the right to keep and bear arms, guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
Judge Legg maintains that the right to carry outside the home is only covered by intermediate scrutiny, but this is a step forward.
At bottom, this case rests on a simple proposition: If the Government wishes to burden a right guaranteed by the Constitution, it may do so provided that it can show a satisfactory justification and a sufficiently adapted method. The showing, however, is always the Government‘s to make. A citizen may not be required to offer a “good and substantial reason”why he should be permitted to exercise his rights. The right‘s existence is all the reason he needs. [p. 20]
This is the first opinion to phrase the idea in such clear and forceful language.
Legg also takes time to address some of the vague language from the Heller decision regarding “presumptively lawful” restrictions.
The Supreme Court’s choice of phrasing connotes that the restrictions it termed “presumptively lawful” pass muster under a heightened standard of review. It would likely not have used the modifier “presumptively” if those restrictions were subject, not to any form of elevated scrutiny, but only to the rational basis review that all laws are presumed to satisfy. If this is correct, and laws limiting the carrying of firearms in sensitive places are indeed implicated by the Second Amendment’s protections, then those protections necessarily extend outside the home, at least to some degree. [pp. 12-13]
While declining to address Woollard’s Equal Protection claim, Judge Legg did leave us with this:
A law that burdens the exercise of an enumerated constitutional right by simply making that right more difficult to exercise cannot be considered “reasonably adapted” to a government interest, no matter how substantial that interest may be. Maryland’s goal of “minimizing the proliferation of handguns among those who do not have a demonstrated need for them,” is not a permissible method of preventing crime or ensuring public safety; it burdens the right too broadly. Those who drafted and ratified the Second Amendment surely knew that the right they were enshrining carried a risk of misuse, and states have considerable latitude to channel the exercise of the right in ways that will minimize that risk. States may not, however, seek to reduce the danger by means of widespread curtailment of the right itself. [p. 20]
We couldn’t get a “bear arms” case before the Supreme Court this session, and some folks think it was because the Court seems hesitant to adress the issue through criminal appeals (which is what Williams and Masciandaro were). Heller and McDonald were “pure” cases, in which the plaintiff was a law-abiding citizen arguing against unjust laws.
Woollard is similar in that respect, and it’s hard not to sympathize with the plaintiff’s situation.
From here, the Maryland Attorney General has 30 days to appeal (or accede). If he appeals, this goes before the 4th Circuit, where things get interesting. This opinion relies a great deal on recent 4th Circuit rulings, and contradicting the District Court means contradicting their own decisions, which seems unlikely.
The credit for this one goes out to the 2nd Amendment Foundation in a big way, but it would not have happened without the tireless and generous efforts of Maryland Shall Issue.