Law requires ‘good and substantial reason’ to carry handgun outside home
By Steve Lash
BridgeTower Media Newswires
BALTIMORE, MD — The U.S. Supreme Court has shown interest in hearing a gun rights group’s argument that the Maryland handgun permit law’s requirement that applicants provide the state with a “good and substantial reason” to carry a handgun outside the home violates the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
The high court last week requested that the Maryland Attorney General’s Office respond to the Second Amendment challenge brought by the Maryland State Rifle and Pistol Association. The office had waived its right to respond, opting instead to see if the justices would have enough interest in the case to request a response.
The attorney general’s brief is due Nov. 18. The justices have not said when they will vote on the association’s request that they hear its challenge.
The case is docketed at the high court as Brian Kirk Malpasso et al. v. William M. Pallozzi, Maryland secretary of state police, No. 19-423.
In its petition for high court review, the association argued that the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is fundamental and that its exercise by law-abiding citizens outside their homes cannot be restricted by the state, such as by requiring a would-be gun owner to have a good and substantial reason.
The Supreme Court has ruled that law-abiding citizens have a constitutional right to keep handguns in their homes for self-protection without needing to provide the state with a justification. The same standard should apply outside the home, the association’s lead attorney argued in its request that the justices hear its appeal of a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling for the state last April.
“As this (Supreme) Court held in Heller, the ‘right of the people to keep and bear arms’ enshrines and protects at its core ‘the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,’” wrote Paul D. Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush. “That holding is plainly inconsistent with a law that flatly prohibits typical, law-abiding citizens from carrying a handgun for self-defense outside the home unless they can demonstrate that they have a particularized ‘good and substantial reason’ that distinguishes them from the body of ‘the people’ protected by the Second Amendment.”
Clement is with Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Washington.
The Attorney General’s Office, as indicated in the 4th Circuit’s decision, has defended the good and substantial reason requirement as necessary to protect the public and to prevent crime. Assistant Maryland Attorney General Julia Doyle Bernhardt is the office’s counsel of record before the high court.
The association is joined in the Supreme Court appeal by Brian Malpasso, who has been described by his lawyers as a law-abiding Mechanicsville resident who completed firearms training and criminal background checks but who was nevertheless denied a handgun carry permit by the Maryland State Police. The state police said Malpasso did not provide a good and substantial reason for carrying a gun in public, such as evidence of any concrete, present fear for his safety, Malpasso’s lawyers stated in earlier court filings.
U.S. District Judge Ellen L. Hollander upheld the state police's denial of Malpasso’s permit application and the 4th Circuit affirmed, prompting the association’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
