18-to-20-year-olds in the Gopher State will soon be able to apply for gun-carry permits.
A unanimous panel for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a Minnesota law requiring an applicant for a concealed carry permit to be at least 21 years of age is unconstitutional. The panel determined that categorically excluding 18-20-year-olds from the right to bear arms does not fit within the country’s historical tradition of gun regulation, a key test for whether a law complies with Second Amendment protections.
“Minnesota has not met its burden to proffer sufficient evidence to rebut the presumption that 18 to 20-year-olds seeking to carry handguns in public for self-defense are protected by the right to keep and bear arms,” Judge Duane Benton wrote in Worth v. Jacobson. “The Carry Ban…violates the Second Amendment as applied to Minnesota through the Fourteenth Amendment, and, thus, is unconstitutional.”
The ruling is another victory for gun-rights advocates who have had success in overturning gun restrictions for adults under the age of 21 in recent years—though not across the board. It also marks the first federal appeals court opinion dealing with a Second Amendment question to be decided on the merits since the Supreme Court handed down its U.S. v. Rahimi decision last month, a sign that the decision may not have done much to alter the fate of gun control laws subject to legal challenges.
In evaluating Minnesota’s under-21 carry ban, the Eighth Circuit panel first determined that 18-20-year-olds seeking to carry a firearm in public for self-defense are covered under the plain text of the Second Amendment.
“Importantly, the Second Amendment’s plain text does not have an age limit,” Judge Benton, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote. “Ordinary, law-abiding 18 to 20-year-old Minnesotans are unambiguously members of the people.”
As a result, he said it was incumbent upon Minnesota to justify its policy by identifying “an adequate historical analogue” consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Minnesota argued that “status-based restrictions from the founding-era,” including restrictions on Catholics, American Indians, slaves, and other disfavored minorities, offered a generalized analogue of governments barring groups deemed to be “dangerous” from accessing firearms. The state contended that 18-to-20-year-olds are uniquely dangerous relative to the rest of the population. Thus, it argued, restricting young adults’ ability to carry concealed guns fits within the tradition of other restrictions based on dangerousness.
Judge Benton dismissed the idea that modern lawmakers can disarm groups as a category based on perceived dangerousness because he said such a principle would “subjugate the right to bear arms in public for self-defense” to “a second-class right.”
“Accordingly, absent more, the Carry Ban cannot be justified on a dangerousness rationale,” he wrote.
Judge Benton also disputed the state’s argument that adults under the age of 21 were considered minors around the time of the Founding and, therefore, lacked certain rights afforded to legal adults.
“Minnesota cites common law evidence that (as minors) 18 to 20-year-olds did not have full rights. Minnesota, however, does not put forward common law analogues restricting the right to bear arms,” he wrote. “Instead, Minnesota points to statutory law, such as the Militia Act of 1792 that required 18 to 20-year-olds to acquire firearms, as evidence the common law was the inverse. A mandate to acquire a firearm is hardly ‘evidence’ that one was previously prohibited from owning one.”
Judge Benton also rejected the state’s invocation of Founding-era rules on college campuses that prohibited students from possessing firearms on school grounds as analogous because he said those same rules would not have been lawful had they been codified by lawmakers.
“These school procedural rules are not laws subject to constitutional limitations,” he wrote. “Minnesota acknowledges that universities had guardianship authority in loco parentis. Universities had many practices that if compelled by the government, would have violated students’ constitutional rights.”
“Minnesota’s proffered founding-era analogues do not meet its burden to demonstrate that the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation supports the Carry Ban,” he concluded.
Minnesota’s prohibition stemmed from a 2003 law that overhauled the state’s concealed-carry permitting regime. The law moved the state to a “shall-issue” system, now ubiquitous across the country, whereby adults who meet the state’s application requirements must be issued a valid permit. However, it also increased the state’s minimum age for applicants from 18 to 21. A coalition of gun-rights groups, including the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), and Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC), challenged that provision in 2021. The groups secured a District Court ruling striking down the law as unconstitutional last April. The panel’s decision Tuesday upholds the lower court’s finding.
The gun-rights groups involved in the case celebrated its outcome. Bryan Strawser, Chair of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, called the decision “a resounding victory for 18-20-year-old adults who wish to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms.”
“This decision confirms that age-based firearm bans are flatly unconstitutional,” added Brandon Combs, FPC President, in a statement. “All peaceable people have a natural right to carry firearms in public, and adults under the age of 21 are no exception.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s (D.) office did not respond to a request for comment.
His office can either appeal the decision to an en banc panel at the Eighth Circuit or request relief from the Supreme Court.
