"The United States typically does one of two things in response to a cert petition. It either files a short response in opposition that is either boilerplate, or it does not file a response. The end result is the same, the cert petition is denied."
<snip>
Not this time.
I believe that machine guns are arms protected by the Second Amendment. I also believe that the Supreme Court is never going to agree with me. Not in my lifetime, and almost certainly not in yours.
Which is why I am pleased that Temple Gun Club, Inc. v. Bondi took a different approach that just might work. Today, the Federal District Court judge dismissed the case with prejudice to nobody's surprise, including the Plaintiffs.
The Plaintiffs have 30 days within which to file their notice of appeal.
Edit. Clicking on the name of the lawsuit will take you to the CourtListener docket where you can read the filings for free.
Brandon Combs is the President of the FPC and the former E.D. of the defunct anti-Open Carry organization The CalGuns.nuts Foundation. Today, he filed a concealed carry lawsuit in Louisiana. The lawsuit has bottomless defects that cannot be cured by amendment.* I'm waiting for the Defendant's attorney to make an appearance. When he does, I will contact him and then do a proper write-up about it.
I won't go into the fatal defects here, but I will say he made a couple of the same mistakes that he made in his Philadelphia concealed carry lawsuit, and several new ones. I will add that it took me about five minutes to find the errors.
Here is a link to the CourtListener docket.
*Federal judges are expected to give plaintiffs at least one chance to amend their complaint before dismissing the complaint with prejudice. A couple of exceptions are when the complaint is frivolous or incapable of being amended.
Judge Dunlap, the only Trump appointee and the only active Republican judge, joined the majority opinion in upholding the Massachusetts AR-15 and magazine bans.
Judge Dunlap took his seat last November. Trump can't blame the u/FedSoc this time.
Judge Dunlap is also on the three-judge panel that will hear oral argument in a challenge to a ban on openly carrying handguns next week.
Here is a link to today's opinion.
Edit: Today, July 8, 2026, the judge accepted the stipulated dismissal with prejudice and ordered the case to be dismissed with prejudice. The case is closed, forever.
The plaintiffs in the New York handgun Open Carry/sensitive places lawsuit, Frey v. Bruen, voluntarily* dismissed their lawsuit with prejudice. This is a good thing because their lawyer did not know what she was doing. And because of this, we got a bad decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. I wish she would likewise move to dismiss the appeal in Baird v. Bonta before the 9th Circuit en banc panel publishes its devastating decision.
Here is a link to the dismissal.
* A dismissal with prejudice means that the plaintiffs cannot file a lawsuit in the future challenging the same New York laws. The plaintiffs could have filed a dismissal without prejudice, but didn't.
The two assault rifle bans are consolidated for oral argument.
Last year, I taught the folks at Duke Law how to batch download and scan cert petitions for Second Amendment cases. They still miss a few, but most of them can be found at this link.
Nearly all of the cases that had already been distributed to at least one conference already, were relisted today to this Thursday's conference. Although the SCOTUS calendar does not indicate that an Orders list will be released next Monday, for the last three terms one was released.
Last term, we had an Orders list in July that contained five cert petition grants.
I have no way of knowing the fate of these relisted cases. I would not be surprised if the 922 (g)(3) cases are Granted, Vacated, and Remanded (GVR'd) in light of US v. Hemani. The fate of the rest is anyone's guess.
I was going to wait to publish this article, but we might have the SCOTUS decisions in Wolford and Hermani tomorrow, so here is a bonus article. It's includes the oral argument from last Wednesday, as well as links to the briefs for those who care to take a deep dive into what is otherwise a very shallow case.
We are running out of conferences this term for the justices to grant a Second Amendment cert petition. There are twenty-six petitions distributed for the voting conference tomorrow.
As usual, I have listed all of them at the end of my article.
We have 15 Second Amendment cert petitions distributed to today's conference. Five of them are the recurring "assault rifle" and "large capacity" magazine ban petitions. This is the 19th conference for Gator's Custom Guns, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. Washington, which presents the question: "Whether ammunition feeding devices with the capacity to hold more than ten rounds are “Arms” presumptively entitled to constitutional protection under the plain text of the Second Amendment."
I asked John Elwood of SCOTUSblog Relist Watch fame, who dug a little deeper, and he found a capital case that was voted on 25 times before the petition was granted. So, Gator's hasn't set an all-time record, but it is a record for Second Amendment relists.
The petitions for today's and next week's conference are listed at the bottom of the article.
Mark Baird v. Rob Bonta is a lawsuit challenging California's ban on openly carrying handguns. Mr. Baird had won before a three-judge panel. That win was vacated, and will be reheard en banc today.
Today, Wednesday, June 3, at 1:30 PM, the en banc oral argument in Baird v. Bonta will be live-streamed on YouTube at this link.
If you miss the live stream, a video of the oral argument will be archived at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals channel on YouTube at this link.
Later in the afternoon, at 4:30 PM, I will be joining the Director of Legal Research and Education at the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Kostas Moros, for a Twitter/X live talk about the oral argument at this link.
If you can't join the Twitter/X live talk, you can still listen to a recording of it at the same link.
Kostas Moros wrote and filed an Amicus brief in support of Mark Baird's handgun Open Carry lawsuit on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation, California Rifle & Pistol Association, Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
EDIT: The SAF (Kostas Moros) will be live tweeting his comments on the oral argument beginning at 1:30 PM at this link.
This conference is deja vu all over again.