In a highly unusual move, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a 2018 state law that prevents people under age 21 from buying rifles and other long guns.
Lawyers in Uthmeier’s office, which typically defends state laws, filed a 17-page brief arguing the Supreme Court should take up an appeal by the National Rifle Association that contends the law violates Second Amendment rights.
Then-Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law after a February 2018 shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 people. The NRA quickly challenged the constitutionality of the law but lost in federal district court and at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The NRA went to the Supreme Court in May.
“The upshot of Florida’s law is that a 20-year-old single mom is powerless to purchase a firearm to defend herself and her child against a menacing ex-boyfriend,” Uthmeier’s brief said. “Same for the 19-year-old who lives alone in a bad neighborhood and fears gang violence. To be sure, some young adults may be able to borrow a firearm from a parent or other older adult. But the exercise of a vaunted constitutional right should not depend on that chance.”
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Uthmeier said in March he would not defend the law, but Wednesday’s brief appeared to go further by arguing the Supreme Court should take up the case and find the law unconstitutional.
The brief left unclear who would argue in favor of the law at the Supreme Court. Uthmeier’s office suggested that the Supreme Court could appoint an “amicus” — an outside party that might ordinarily file a friend-of-the-court brief — to defend the law.
Brady, a national group that supports such gun restrictions, filed a friend-of-the-court brief Aug. 8 in the case and also issued a statement that criticized Uthmeier for not defending the law.
“Not only have similar age restrictions existed since our founding as a nation, they are consistent with modern scientific knowledge regarding physical brain development and our constantly expanding knowledge and understanding of mature brain functioning,” Douglas Letter, Brady’s chief legal officer, said in the statement. “In refusing to do his job, Attorney General Uthmeier shamefully denies these facts and denies the success of the law in saving lives and decreasing the rates of gun deaths of the state’s minors.”
Brady argued in its brief that the Supreme Court should not take up the case. Such a decision by the justices would effectively leave in place the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision upholding the law.
Gov. Ron DeSantis in February appointed Uthmeier to serve as attorney general after former Attorney General Ashley Moody was appointed to a U.S. Senate seat. Uthmeier previously worked as DeSantis’ chief of staff.
The gun-age law was included in a broader school-safety package that passed after former Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Nikolas Cruz, then 19, used a semiautomatic rifle to murder and injure students and faculty members at the school.
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While the law bars people under 21 from buying rifles and long guns, they can receive them, for example, as gifts from family members. Federal law has long prevented people under 21 from buying handguns.
The court battle about the law has played out amid U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Second Amendment cases. In a key 2022 ruling, known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, justices included a standard that gun restrictions must be consistent with the “nation’s historical tradition” of regulating firearms.
In an 8-4 ruling in March, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Florida gun-age law met that standard.
“From this history emerges a straightforward conclusion: the Florida law is consistent with our regulatory tradition in why and how it burdens the right of minors to keep and bear arms,” William Pryor, chief judge of the Atlanta-based appeals court, wrote. “Because minors have yet to reach the age of reason, the Florida law prohibits them from purchasing firearms, yet it allows them to receive firearms from their parents or another responsible adult.”
Uthmeier’s brief Wednesday focused heavily on historical issues about gun regulation and disputed the appeal court’s conclusions.
“The Eleventh Circuit majority identified no history of states restricting the right of 18-to-20-year-olds to purchase firearms, and certainly no history of restrictions on the purchase rights of legal adults,” the brief said. “Just the opposite, founding-era evidence affirmatively demonstrates that early Americans trusted 18-to-20-year-olds with firearms and, indeed, expected them to possess and even purchase guns. At the very least, history reflects that society understood that those deemed sufficiently mature for purposes of the age of majority — which in Florida and elsewhere in this country is age 18 — would have ready access to guns.”
The Florida House in 2023, 2024 and this year passed bills to repeal the 2018 law. But the Senate did not approve the bills.
