A trio of Democratic states is asking a judge to let them defend a federal law barring the U.S. Postal Service from shipping guns, after the Trump administration said it would not defend the statute in an open lawsuit.
The Justice Department announced in a filing earlier this year in a lawsuit brought against USPS that it would not defend a 1927 federal law banning handguns from being shipped by the USPS, citing the department’s Jan. 15 legal opinion that the law is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.
With the federal government declining to defend the law, three Democratic states — New Jersey, New York, and Delaware — filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on Monday to intervene in the lawsuit and defend the federal law themselves.
“Because the federal government recently announced that it will no longer defend this law on the merits, this Court should grant New Jersey, New York, and Delaware the ability to intervene to provide the Second Amendment defense that no other party currently will,” the filing said.
The states argued that striking down the law would “spark a flood of concealable arms mailed into” their states, which would “sharply” impair the integrity of their state laws regulating guns. They also warn that striking down the law would be an “unprecedented” reversal of a century of enforcement for gun regulation.
The lawsuit, brought by the Gun Owners of America against USPS in federal court last year, claims the long-standing law violates their members’ Second Amendment rights. The DOJ filed a motion with the federal court in January, citing the Jan. 15 legal opinion in support of the group’s claims that the law violates the Second Amendment.
“We conclude that the restriction imposed by section 1715 violates the Second Amendment. Section 1715 makes it difficult to travel with arms for lawful purposes, including self-defense, target shooting, and hunting. The statute also imposes significant barriers to shipping constitutionally protected firearms as articles of commerce, which interferes with citizens’ incidental rights to acquire and maintain arms,” the DOJ legal opinion said.
“Indeed, the statute ultimately aims to suppress traffic in constitutionally protected articles thus rendering the law per se unconstitutional as to those articles, and we are aware of no historical analogues that would satisfy the government’s burden of showing that this unprecedented restriction ‘is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,’” the opinion continued.
SUPREME COURT PROTECTS POSTAL SERVICE FROM BEING SUED OVER INTENTIONALLY UNDELIVERED MAIL
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is overseeing the case and will issue a ruling on whether to allow the states to intervene in the lawsuit in the coming months.
The motion was filed by the states the same day the Supreme Court heard arguments in a major gun rights case for unlawful drug users. During arguments in United States v. Hemani on Monday, the justices appeared skeptical of the Justice Department’s defense of a federal law outlawing unlawful drug users — including those who use marijuana, which is legal in some states — from possessing a firearm, even when not intoxicated.