A San Diego federal judge on Wednesday again struck down a state law that required background checks for nearly all purchases of firearm ammunition and barred California residents from bringing home ammunition that they purchased out of state.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez ruled that such restrictions violate the Second Amendment. He also ruled that the portion of the law restricting out-of-state purchases violated the dormant Commerce Clause and is preempted by federal law regulating interstate transportation of firearms.
Benitez had previously struck down the same law in April 2020, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the law just days later while the government appealed the ruling. Before the 9th Circuit could rule on that appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in a New York gun case that upended Second Amendment case law.
After the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, the 9th Circuit sent the case back to Benitez to be re-litigated under that new framework, which holds that modern gun laws must be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Benitez found that the “ammunition background checks laws have no historical pedigree and operate in such a way that they violate the Second Amendment right of citizens to keep and bear arms.” He issued an immediate injunction barring the state from enforcing the law.
The California Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the plaintiffs in the case, said in a statement that Wednesday’s ruling represents “continued progress in rolling back decades of attacks on the rights of lawful gun owners.”
Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the group, said the ruling showed, once again, that the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision has greatly impacted how courts must analyze “these absurdly restrictive laws.”
Attorney General Rob Bonta called the decision “harmful” and said it endangers Californians. “These laws were put in place as a safeguard and a way of protecting the people of California — and they work,” Bonta said in a statement. “We will continue to fight for our authority to keep Californians safe.”
Within hours of Benitez’s ruling, Bonta’s office filed a notice of appeal to the 9th Circuit and requested that Benitez issue a stay — either one that would remain in effect during the entire appeal process, or one that would give the state 10 days to seek the lengthier stay from the 9th Circuit.
Benitez denied that request, calling the government’s case “weak” and saying his decision was based on four legal principles that all favor not granting the stay.
That means California cannot enforce the ammunition background check laws in question unless and until the 9th Circuit stays Benitez’s ruling.
Wednesday’s ruling was part of a lawsuit filed in 2018 by gun-rights advocates, including six-time Olympic medalist shooter Kim Rhode. It targeted a law that requires point-of-sale background checks and also bans people from bringing ammunition purchased out of state into California, unless the ammo first goes to a licensed distributor.
The background check portion of the law came about in a unique way. According to Benitez, voters passed the law in 2016 as part of Proposition 63, which also banned large-capacity magazines. But the background-check portion of the law was supposed to create a system in which gun owners would apply for an ammunition purchase permit that would cost $50 and be valid for four years.
Before voters even approved the law, though, the Legislature amended the system to require an automated background check every time someone purchased ammunition. Benitez insinuated that the voter-approved system may have withstood a legal challenge.
“Without prejudging the discarded 4-year permit system envisioned by the voters of California, such a system would clearly be a more reasonable constitutional approach than the current scheme,” the judge wrote.
Benitez has consistently ruled in favor of gun-rights advocates challenging California’s strict firearms laws, earning him the moniker “St. Benitez” among some gun enthusiasts. He’s made multiple rulings, most recently in October, that California’s ban on assault rifles is unconstitutional. In September he once again ruled that the state’s large-capacity magazine ban, a different part of the same law he ruled on Wednesday, was unconstitutional.
His 32-page decision issued Wednesday lacked the same rhetorical flourishes of his 2020 ruling on ammunition background checks, a 120-page condemnation of a law that he said at the time “defies common sense.” Wednesday’s ruling was a more straightforward explanation of why he agreed with each of the plaintiffs’ legal arguments and disagreed with the government’s.
“In the end, the State has failed to carry its burden to demonstrate that the ammunition background check laws ‘are consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,’ as required by Bruen,” the judge wrote. “… A sweeping background check requirement imposed every time a citizen needs to buy ammunition is an outlier that our ancestors would have never accepted for a citizen.”
He also wrote that state data showed too many people seeking to lawfully purchase ammunition were being rejected because of flaws in the system. He said that according to state statistics, when the system was first implemented in 2019, the rejection rate was 16 percent. That has since fallen to 11 percent, “but is still too high,” he wrote.
He compared California’s background check law to a voter-identification law in Texas that was struck down as being an excessive burden on the constitutional rights of citizens because 4.5 percent of voters lacked the required identification documents. He wrote that if the Texas law imposing an unconstitutional burden on 4.5 percent of registered voters was enough for it to violate the 15th Amendment, then the California law that “rejects 11 (percent) of those who are checked … is likewise an unconstitutional burden on the Second Amendment.”
