Chief Supreme Court Justice Warns Politicians About Ignoring the Courts

Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts sent a warning message about politicians disregarding federal court rulings. There are plenty of examples of rampant disregard of federal court rulings by the states, especially when it comes to guns.

“Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings,” Roberts said. “These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected. Judicial independence is worth preserving. As my late colleague Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, an independent judiciary is ‘essential to the rule of law in any land,’ yet it ‘is vulnerable to assault; it can be shattered if the society law exists to serve does not take care to assure its preservation.’”

One example of states ignoring Supreme Court rulings is the New York State Concealed Carry Improvement Act (CCIA). The CCIA was a response by the Empire State to the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. New York State lost its battle over concealed carry permits in 2022, making the state “shall issue.” Shortly after the decision, it passed the CCIA, which curtailed the rights of the people to bear arms outside the home.

According to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, the law was a response to the Supreme Court’s “dangerous” decision in Bruen. The state was effectively thumbing its nose at SCOTUS. The CCIA set off a set of legal challenges which have seen various levels of success. One thing is clear: New York State doesn’t care about the Bruen ruling and will do everything possible to subvert it.

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New York State isn’t the only state with a rampant disregard for the Bruen decision. Bruen also knocked down intermediate scrutiny, reaching far beyond just concealed carry. It touched every facet of gun laws in the country. States could only rely on text, tradition, and history of firearms regulations from the founding era to prove a gun law was constitutional. It could no longer use things like “public safety” to justify its anti-gun regulations. It put the Second Amendment on an equal playing field as other amendments. Yet states have still tried to use the old standard.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas said, “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right.”

Yet, it isn’t only Bruen that is ignored states. The Heller decision is one of the most disregarded SCOTUS decisions in the history of the courts. Many states have tried to ban guns that are in common use. The Supreme Court said that firearms in common use cannot be banned. Yet, many states have attempted to ban AR-15s, the most common rifle in America. These laws have been challenged in court as well.

Government agencies have also ignored the courts. In Cargill, SCOTUS ruled that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) could not change the definition of a machine gun to shoehorn bump stocks into that definition. Even though the Supreme Court rebuked the Bureau, it once again tried a similar tactic to ban forced reset triggers using the same arguments in the bump stock case.

What should be slam dunk cases are not because, like anti-gun states and agencies that ignore SCOTUS rulings, some lower courts also have ignored Supreme Court rulings. In a challenge to the Protect Illinois Communities Act (PICA), a three-judge panel from the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals stayed an injunction issued by a District Court judge. The judge ruled that the PICA violated the United States Constitution by banning so-called “assault weapons.” The Circuit Court disagreed, even though no historical analogues from the founding era show the government has the power to ban AR-15s.

The Seventh Circuit isn’t the only appeals court that ignores the Supreme Court. In a challenge to the Maryland “assault weapons” ban, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Second Amendment does not protect AR-15s. Once again, no historical analogues from the founding era were cited. The court seemed to have used interest balancing in their decision, even though Bruen specifically said the court could not use interest balancing to uphold a gun law. These decisions violated both Heller and Bruen.

It just isn’t guns that courts have gone after. A California judge ruled that switchblades could be banned because they are dangerous. Heller said that “dangerous and unusual” weapons could be subject to a ban. This judge changed “dangerous and unusual” to “dangerous or unusual,” fundamentally changing Heller’s meaning. Using the judge’s reasoning, the states could ban anything they want by just claiming an item is “dangerous.”

Until the SCOTUS deals with these cases and overturns the lower court’s decisions, the lower courts and the states will continue to ignore the Supreme Court’s decision.

About John Crump

Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.