Andrea Beckwith, et al. v. Aaron M. Frey, Individually and as Attorney General of Maine

In 2024, Maine enacted a law that requires nearly everyone in the state to wait 72 hours after purchasing a firearm before they may keep and bear it. Even if the purchaser passes a background check instantly establishing that she is a law-abiding citizen, she still must wait three days before she can exercise her right to keep and bear arms. Maine’s law does not require, or even contemplate, any sort of investigation during that 72-hour period. The wait is instead a so-called “cooling-off” period, justified on the view that simply wanting to acquire a firearm suffices to allow the state to treat nearly every purchaser as a walking danger to themselves or others. Maine was not alone in enacting such a law in the wake of Bruen; New Mexico adopted a cooling-off law of its own within weeks of Maine. The two laws are materially identical, except that the delay imposed by New Mexico’s law lasts seven days rather than three. Both laws were swiftly challenged. The Tenth Circuit held New Mexico’s law unconstitutional (and in the process implicitly invalided Colorado’s similar law), but the First Circuit upheld Maine’s. The court did so, moreover, without even subjecting Maine’s law to historical scrutiny, on the theory that laws restricting the acquisition of firearms do not implicate the Second Amendment at all unless they are so “abusive” as to effectively nullify the right altogether. The question presented is: Whether forcing law-abiding citizens who have already passed a background check to wait out a multi-day cooling-off period before taking possession of a firearm violates the Second Amendment.