A court upheld a New Jersey law Wednesday that bans the carrying of guns in “sensitive places,” including hospitals, schools, polling locations, and casinos.
The ruling comes as many federal courts have maintained state laws that restrict where guns can be carried in public. The New Jersey law, which limits the public areas where someone can carry a concealed firearm, will mostly remain in place.
The ban on carrying firearms in “sensitive places” came after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, which expanded concealed-carry rights. The New Jersey legislature passed laws in response that created places where people could not carry weapons.
A lawsuit was brought by gun advocates against that law. This ruling comes after a federal judge first ruled that the law could be in violation of the Second Amendment and issued a temporary restraining order. A federal court later upheld the law in 2023 and allowed for the continued enforcement of New Jersey’s restrictions.
Under the Bruen decision, gun restrictions now need to be linked to traditional firearm regulations from the country’s history. The court said that in determining if New Jersey’s law was constitutional, the court would look at gun regulations from old English law to the post-Civil War era and the late 19th century.
On Wednesday, Circuit Court Judge Cheryl Ann Krause wrote in the majority opinion that “[we]have done our best to distill the principles of our Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation from the available historical record, and what we have found convinces us that New Jersey’s law, at least in part, continues that tradition.”
The court still said some of the law parts of the law viewed as “most far-reaching” will remain blocked. This includes restrictions on carrying guns in someone’s car and requiring gun owners to purchase liability insurance.
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New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin hailed the ruling.
“We were proud to defend this critical public-safety law, and to successfully keep our residents, children, and law enforcement officers safe from the scourge of firearms violence. Laws like this, and our own wide-ranging law enforcement work to combat gun crime, is why we are now seeing record low shootings in New Jersey,” he said in a statement.