Defending Massachusetts’ public-carry licensing system.
Court: District of Massachusetts; First Circuit
Issue at Stake: Public carry
Summary: On June 21, 2018, Everytown filed an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, urging the federal appeals court to uphold the district court’s decision rejecting a challenge to Massachusetts’s system for regulating the carrying of firearms in public, particularly as implemented in Boston and Brookline. Everytown’s brief refutes the primary historical arguments made by gun-lobby lawyers, and explains that Massachusetts’s requirement that an applicant have “good cause” to obtain a permit to carry a firearm in public is consistent with centuries of Anglo-American tradition—and thus constitutional under the Second Amendment. Everytown previously filed a similar brief in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Decision: On November 2, 2018, the First Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision rejecting plaintiffs’ Second Amendment challenge to Massachusetts’s law as implemented in Boston and Brookline. On June 15, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review. (The First Circuit’s decision referred to the case as Gould v. Morgan. It was previously known as Weng v. Evans and Gould v. O’Leary and referred to in the Supreme Court as Gould v. Lipson.)
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