With 15 Days Left in Office, Solicitor General Files Cert Petition in 2nd Amendment Case

January 6th, 2017

The Solicitor General has filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in Lynch v. Binderup, which considers whether 2nd Amendment rights can be restored to certain individuals who have finished their felony sentences. The en banc Third Circuit, on an 8-7 vote, ruled in favor of Binderup. (For details on the breakdown, see Eugene Volokh’s post from September).

I’ll blog more about the petition later, but for now, I will flag that the Question Presented, as stated by the SG, is misleading:

Whether petitioners are entitled to relief from the longstanding federal statute prohibiting felons from possessing firearms, 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), based on their as-applied Second Amendment claim that their criminal offenses and other particular circumstances do not warrant a firearms disqualification.

Section 922(g)(1) is from 1968–hardly “longstanding,” though there is an obvious effort to fit it within Heller’s framework.

This may be a petition that Attorney General Sessions seeks to withdraw (see my previous post on the topic).