LOS ANGELES (CN) — A group of gun owners and Second Amendment advocates asked a federal judge to force Los Angeles County to issue concealed carry permits without delay, claiming that the current 18-month wait violates their constitutional rights.
U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett didn't issue a ruling on their request for a preliminary injunction at a hearing Wednesday afternoon in downtown LA. The judge indicated she may request additional briefing before she takes the motion under submission.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association and the Second Amendment Foundation, among others, sued the LA County Sheriff's Department in December, claiming that unreasonable and "abusive" delays to process and approve concealed carry permits violate the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which said that states can't impose subjective "good cause" requirements on applicants for a concealed carry permit.
The plaintiffs also claim that La Verne, a city in LA County, is violating the Second Amendment and the Bruen ruling by imposing a fee of as much as $1,000 to apply for a concealed carry permit.
"No court would tolerate abuses like this for any other constitutional right," the plaintiffs said in their request for a preliminary injunction. "If the right to vote was conditioned on an 18-month registration timeline, a $1,000 registration fee, or subjective psychological testing, an injunction would issue before the ink dried on a plaintiff’s complaint."
California has the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S., but in the wake of the Bruen decision, the state has dropped its "good cause" requirement for a concealed carry permit. The 2022 Supreme Court ruling, however, has caused a deluge of applications that the LA County Sheriff's Department says it hasn't had time to process in a timely manner.
Under a recently revised section of the California penal code, local law enforcement has 120 days after they receive a completed application to approve or deny a concealed carry permit.
La Verne, a city of about 31,000 located east of downtown Los Angeles, solved this in part by outsourcing the application process, but applicants are on the hook for the city's expenses, including a psychological examination, which the plaintiffs claim is unnecessary.
Bruce Lindsay, a lawyer representing the city, said that La Verne was put in the position to process its own applications when, after Bruen and the resulting increase in applications, the LA Sheriff stopped doing so for cities for which it doesn't provide law enforcement services. A study found that it would cost less to use an outside vendor to process the applications than it would if the city's own employees had to do it, he said.
"This is not a city money-making endeavor," Lindsay said. "Charging for what your expenses are isn't a violation of constitutional rights."
The judge appeared reluctant to issue the sweeping injunction the plaintiffs seek, and she asked Konstandinos Moros, one of their attorneys, to explain how she can issue such an order that applies beyond four of the named gun owners in the lawsuit who have been waiting for the Sheriff's Department to issue their permits.
"It's an 'as applied' challenge to the delay, shouldn't I look at the particular individuals," she asked the attorney.
Garnett also wasn't persuaded how instructive the Bruen decision was in terms of deciding what delays or fees were unreasonable in the high court's view. Given that things simply cost more in California than in many other states, it wouldn't help much for her to look at jurisdictions outside the state, she observed.
"There's nothing in Bruen that says the city can't pass on the costs of these checks to the applicant," Garnett said.
Ryan Chabot, an attorney representing the LA County Sheriff, told the judge that in recent months the department has been making progress in addressing the backlog of applications that has built up after the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling. There was no evidence of the "abuse" that would be needed to sustain the plaintiffs' Second Amendment claim, he said.
Chabot pointed out that 80% of applications the department receives are incomplete and require follow-ups. As for the four named plaintiffs who potentially could be entitled to injunctive relief over the delays, the lawyer told the judge that their applications are moving through the pipeline and some of them are nearing the end.
The plaintiffs also challenge California's policy of not allowing out-of-state residents to apply for a concealed carry permit and not honoring their permits from the states in which they reside.
This, Moros claimed, was like one state not honoring the marriage license of a couple who got married in another state. It also meant, he said, that a person from Michigan who wants to take his family on vacation in California is denied his constitutional right to protect himself and his family while on vacation.
Christina Lopez, an attorney with the California Attorney General's Office, responded that these restrictions have been on the books for more than 10 years and shouldn't be ruled on a truncated preliminary injunction schedule.
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