Virginia Duncan, et al. v. Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California

In District of Columbia v. Heller, this Court held that the Second Amendment protects arms that are “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” 554 U.S. 570, 625 (2008). Yet California prohibits the possession of firearm magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, even though these magazines are widely owned and standard-issue for handguns and long guns typically owned for self-defense. And California does not stop at banning the acquisition of these common magazines prospectively; its law applies retrospectively to treat any non-compliant magazine as contraband—no matter how long, lawfully, or safely it has been possessed—thereby dispossessing citizens of lawfully acquired and constitutionally protected property without any compensation from the state. A divided en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit nevertheless upheld California’s ban—even as it purported to assume that the prohibited magazines are protected by the Second Amendment—in an opinion that generated multiple dissents and over panel and district court opinions to the contrary. In doing so, moreover, the en banc panel made clear that the Ninth Circuit will continue to apply a heightened-in-name-only form of scrutiny in the Second Amendment context “unless and until the Supreme Court tells” it otherwise. App.14. The questions presented are:

1. Whether a blanket, retrospective, and confiscatory law prohibiting ordinary law-abiding citizens from possessing magazines in common use violates the Second Amendment. 2. Whether a law dispossessing citizens without compensation of property that was lawfully acquired and long possessed without incident violates the Takings Clause.

2. Whether the “two-step” approach that the Ninth Circuit and other lower courts apply to Second Amendment challenges is consistent with the Constitution and this Court’s precedent.