Michael Gould, et al. v. Andrew Lipson, in His Official Capacity as Chief of the Brookline Police Department, et al.

In District of Columbia v. Heller, this Court held that the Second Amendment protects “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation,” 554 U.S. 570, 592 (2008), and in McDonald v. City of Chicago, it determined that this right “is fully applicable to the States,” 561 U.S. 742, 750 (2010). The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has concluded that the right to carry a firearm extends outside the home and that licensing restrictions that require citizens to show a special need for carrying a firearm effectively “destroy[ ] the ordinarily situated citizen’s right to bear arms” and therefore are categorically unconstitutional. Wrenn v. District of Columbia, 864 F.3d 650, 666 (D.C. Cir. 2017). By contrast, the court below, along with the Second, Third, and Fourth Circuits, have upheld substantively indistinguishable licensing restrictions under a watered-down “intermediate scrutiny” analysis. The questions presented are:

1. Whether the Second Amendment protects the right to carry a firearm outside the home for selfdefense.

2. Whether the government may deny categorically the exercise of the right to carry a firearm outside the home to typical law-abiding citizens by conditioning the exercise of the right on a showing of a special need to carry a firearm.