A Second Amendment Preview of the Supreme Court’s Long Conference

The Supreme Court will officially open the Fall 2025 Term on Monday, September 29 with its annual Long Conference. The Court—which has dealt only with select emergency applications over the summer recess—will consider all petitions that have been distributed since its last conference in June. These include approximately fifty petitions relating to firearms and the Second Amendment, some of which the Court has already begun to reschedule for future conferences. Highlighted below are seven major petitions on this list that the Court will consider whether to grant in the coming weeks.

Missouri v. United States

In August 2024, the Eighth Circuit struck down Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA) on the grounds that it violated the Supremacy Clause. As described in this prior post, SAPA, adopted in 2021, purported to invalidate all federal gun laws that infringe the right to bear arms and provided that Missouri would not recognize or enforce such laws. The Eighth Circuit concluded that, although the state had the power to withdraw its assistance from federal law enforcement and prioritize allocation of state enforcement resources, “Missouri’s assertion that federal laws regulating firearms are ‘invalid to this State’ is inconsistent with both [the letter and spirit of the constitution].”

In its petition, Missouri asks the Court to grant certiorari to address both jurisdictional and federalism issues. Missouri argues that the Eighth Circuit erred in adopting a “novel approach to standing that contradicts Article III,” and that the federal government lacked standing to sue to invalidate SAPA. It also asserts that the Eighth Circuit’s decision conflicts with the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson because the federal government has no standalone cause of action to enforce the Supremacy Clause.[1] On the merits, Missouri contends that under the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering principle, federal courts cannot prevent states from withholding assistance from federal law enforcement based on the states’ reason for doing so.

In its response, filed after several extensions, the federal government argues that it has standing to challenge SAPA and that some of SAPA’s provisions clearly violate the Supremacy Clause. However, the federal government also expresses its “concerns about whether the judgment below extends too far and enjoins applications of the Act that do constitute mere non-enforcement of federal law protected under the anti-commandeering doctrine.” Accordingly, even though it asks the Court not to grant certiorari, the government says it will consent to narrowing the scope of the Eighth Circuit’s decision except as to SAPA’s “plainly unconstitutional provisions.”

NRA v. Glass and Paris v. Lara

NRA v. Glass and Paris v. Lara represent two sides of the deepening circuit split regarding the rights of 18-to-20-year-olds under the Second Amendment. To date, the Fourth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have all upheld laws restricting the ability of 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase, use, or publicly carry firearms, whereas the Third, Fifth, and Eighth Circuits have all struck down such laws for violating the Second Amendment. 

The petition in Glass challenges the Eleventh Circuit’s March 2025 en banc decision upholding Florida’s ban on selling or transferring firearms to 18-to-20-year-olds. Although Florida defended the constitutionality of its law before the Eleventh Circuit, the state attorney general criticized the circuit’s decision after it was released and now argues that the Court should grant certiorari to declare the state’s purchase ban invalid. Florida instead suggests that, “if th[e] Court wants the benefit of opposing views at the merits stage, it can appoint an amicus to defend the judgment of the court of appeals.”

For its part, the petition in Paris asks the Court to overturn the Third Circuit’s January 2025 decision striking down Pennsylvania’s prohibition on 18-to-20-year-olds publicly carrying firearms during states of emergency. Although respondents believe that the Third Circuit faithfully applied Bruen and Rahimi in striking down Pennsylvania’s law, they still urge the Court to grant certiorari in order “to provide much needed clarity about the scope of the Second Amendment’s protections” for 18-to-20-year-olds.

Quiroz v. United States

In January 2025, the Fifth Circuit upheld the facial constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(n), the federal provision barring individuals under felony indictment from shipping, transporting, or receiving firearms or ammunition. After analyzing the founding-era system of pretrial detention, the Fifth Circuit held that § 922(n) fit within the Nation’s historical tradition of “protecting the public from criminal defendants indicted for serious offenses.” It explained that “pretrial detention ‘naturally entailed the loss of a wide range of liberties–including the loss of access to weapons,’” and noted that, because § 922(n) does not restrict possession of firearms, “it could be said that § 922(n) places a lesser burden on Second Amendment rights.”

Petitioner Quiroz now asks the Court to grant certiorari to declare § 922(n) facially unconstitutional, or in the alternative, unconstitutional as applied to individuals indicted for non-violent felony offenses. Both parties have discussed the as-applied question in their briefs, but neither the district court nor the Fifth Circuit has had a chance to analyze the issue, as both courts resolved the case on facial grounds. Quiroz argues that because pretrial detention “did not target the misuse of firearms,” the Fifth Circuit could not rely on it as a historical analogue justifying § 922(n) under Bruen and Rahimi. He further asserts that even if pretrial detention is a valid analogue, § 922(n) does not impose a “comparable burden” on the right of armed self-defense, and that the burden imposed is not “comparably justified.” With respect to his as-applied challenge, Quiroz contends that the Court should consider whether an indictment relates to a violent or a non-violent felony rather than simply relying on the felony classification, which has evolved to encompass more crimes since the Founding Era. The federal government waived its right to respond to the petition.

United States v. Daniels

In January 2025, the Fifth Circuit reversed the conviction of a marijuana user under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(3), the federal provision prohibiting unlawful drug users and addicts from possessing firearms, on the grounds that it violated the Second Amendment. The Fifth Circuit concluded that even though “all signs here point to a defendant’s routinely driving around town while intoxicated with loaded guns in his car,” the conviction was invalid because the jury was not instructed that it had to find “that Daniels was presently or even regularly intoxicated at the time of arrest” in order to convict him. In a prior decision, the Fifth Circuit held that, although § 922(g)(3) is facially constitutional, it is unconstitutional as applied to individuals “based on habitual or occasional drug use”—as opposed to drug use at the time they possessed a firearm. (For more on how different circuits have analyzed the constitutionality of § 922(g)(3), see this prior post.)

In its petition, the federal government argues that another case involving § 922(g)(3), United States v. Hemani (which involves not only marijuana but also cocaine and prescription drug abuse), presents a better vehicle for the Court to address the provision’s constitutionality. It thus asks the Court to hold the Daniels petition until it disposes of Hemani. In its Hemani petition, the federal government argues not only that the Fifth Circuit erred in its analysis of § 922(g)(3), but also that the recently revitalized executive process under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) that provides a path to gun-rights restoration for federal prohibited possessors is “the appropriate mechanism for addressing concerns [about specific applications of § 922(g)(3)]”.  

In his response, Daniels asserts that the Court should not review the case given its interlocutory posture and the fact that the lower courts are “currently considering Second Amendment challenges to § 922(g)(3) and formulating their own analyses.” He further argues that the petition should not be held pending the outcome in Hemani given the important differences between the cases: while both involve as-applied Second Amendment challenges, Hemani challenges his conviction as a whole whereas Daniels has only objected to the adequacy of jury instructions.

Vincent v. Bondi

In February 2025, the Tenth Circuit held that applying 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the federal prohibition on felons possessing firearms, to someone with a single, seventeen-year-old, non-violent felony conviction did not violate the Second Amendment. It concluded that the Court’s decision in Rahimi did not abrogate Tenth Circuit precedent holding that § 922(g)(1) was constitutional in all applications. The Tenth Circuit reached this conclusion prior to Bruen, based on the Supreme Court’s instruction in District of Columbia v. Heller that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” 

In her petition, Vincent—who was convicted of felony bank fraud in 2008 for passing a fraudulent check—asks the Court to grant certiorari to resolve the circuit split over whether the Second Amendment permits as-applied challenges to § 922(g)(1). Currently, the Third, Fifth, and Sixth Circuits allow as-applied challenges, while the Fourth, Eighth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits do not. Vincent also argues that the Tenth Circuit erred in refusing to apply the history-and-tradition test developed by the Court in Bruen. Finally, she asserts that § 922(g)(1) is overbroad because it permanently prohibits nonviolent offenders, including “those who have been indisputably reformed and pose no threat to others,” from possessing firearms.

In its response, the federal government argues that the disagreement among circuit courts about how to evaluate as-applied challenges to § 922(g)(1) “does not warrant th[e] Court’s review at this time” because it is “shallow and may evaporate in light of the Department’s re-establishment of the Section 925(c) [federal gun-rights restoration] process.” The government also asserts that Vincent’s petition is “doom[ed]” because relief is now available to her through the executive branch restoration framework—which, according to DOJ’s proposed rule, would account for factors such as the time that has elapsed since Vincent’s conviction and her personal characteristics. As such, the government  asserts that “petitioner can no longer challenge Section 922(g)(1) on the ground that it subjects her to ‘permanent’ disarmament.”

Although the petition has not yet been distributed for the Long Conference, the Court will likely do so soon as both the respondent’s brief in opposition and the petitioner’s reply have already been filed.

Wolford v. Lopez

In a September 2024 decision, the Ninth Circuit upheld Hawaii’s prohibition on carrying firearms onto private property without consent by the owner, which could be granted either by unambiguous written or verbal authorization or by clear and conspicuous signage. (For more on the decision, which also analyzed the constitutionality of Hawaii and California’s restrictions on carrying firearms in sensitive locations, see this prior post.) The Ninth Circuit concluded that Hawaii’s prohibition fell within the Nation’s “established tradition of arranging the default rules that apply specifically to the carrying of firearms onto private property.” In particular, it noted two “uncontroversial” “historical ‘dead ringers’” to the Hawaii restriction: a New Jersey law enacted in 1771 and a Louisiana law enacted in 1865.

Petitioners now ask the Court to grant certiorari to address two questions: (1) whether Hawaii’s “novel default rule” violates the Second Amendment, and (2) whether courts can rely solely on post-Reconstruction Era and later laws in their history-and-tradition analysis under Bruen. Petitioners argue that the Ninth Circuit “permitted Hawaii to eviscerate the Second Amendment right Bruen recognized” because “[t]he net result [of the decision] is that Hawaiians, including Petitioners, no longer may carry firearms for lawful self-defense in tens of thousands of private property locations in Hawaii.”

Seven amicus curiae briefs were also filed with the Court in the case, including one by the federal government. In its brief, the government urges the Court to grant the petition, asserting that “Hawaii’s novel default rule defies—indeed, effectively nullifies—the ‘general right to publicly carry arms’ that Bruen recognized.” The government does not, however, address the second question raised in the petition about the proper role for post-Civil War historical evidence under Bruen.

In response, Hawaii’s Attorney General argues that the Court should not grant the petition because of the case’s preliminary posture and the absence of any real circuit split over the use of Reconstruction-era sources. The state also defends the merits of the Ninth Circuit’s decision and emphasizes that Hawaii’s prohibition “represents a valid governmental effort to vindicate property owners’ fundamental right to exclude by enacting a default rule that comports with the community’s reasonable expectations regarding armed entry onto private property.”