A U.S. District Court judge in California has ruled the Golden State should allow non-residents to apply for concealed carry licenses, and has given the state and plaintiffs in the case 30 days “to meet and confer and submit a proposed order for an injunction consistent with this order.”
Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo, a Barack Obama appointee for the Southern District of California, granted the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment as to their facial challenge based on the Second and Fourteenth amendments.
The lawsuit was brought by Christopher J. Hoffman, Chad Orrin, Jennifer Sensiba, and the Firearms Policy Coalition in April 2024. Plaintiffs were represented by attorneys Bradley A. Benbrook and Stephen M. Duvernay at the Benbrook Law Group in Sacramento.
In her 12-page decision, Judge Bencivengo explained, “Opening the application process to nonresidents does not limit California’s ability to regulate who receives a CCW license based on other measured parameters. Nonresidents are simply afforded the same chance guaranteed to residents to exercise their Second Amendment rights. In reaching this conclusion, the Court agrees with its sister court in the Central District that the challenged statutory framework’s exclusion of nonresidents violates the Second Amendment.”
As reported by the Daily Caller, FPC President Brandon Combs issued a prepared statement: “This important judgment means that people must maintain their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms when they cross California’s border. Just as people are free to speak or worship in states they don’t reside in, this win makes clear they are likewise free to bear arms for lawful purposes throughout the United States.”
All three individual plaintiffs are FPC members living out of state, but they want to legally carry handguns for personal protection while visiting California.
As noted by the judge, “The problem for the State is not the licensing laws themselves: Plaintiffs do not seek California’s licensing scheme stricken in its entirety. Instead, the State must provide a historical analogue for licensing laws that did not allow nonresidents to apply. For that category of restriction, the State provides a series of state laws from the early 1900s that appear to impose residency requirements on licenses. Ignoring that these laws do not date to the Founding or Ratification Era, many laws from the same period explicitly allowed nonresidents to apply.”
