Possible jurors in Rittenhouse case probed on guns, as judge laments politics in case - Reuters

KENOSHA, Wis., Nov 1 (Reuters) - Potential jurors in the trial of a U.S. teenager accused of fatally shooting racial justice demonstrators were quizzed about their experience with firearms as jury selection proceeded on Monday in what the judge called a "very political" case.

Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, is charged with killing two men and wounding a third with a military-style rifle during protests in Wisconsin last year. The protests were sparked by a police officer's shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, amid sometimes violent demonstrations over racism and police brutality that rattled a number of U.S. cities.

Rittenhouse has emerged as a hero to some conservatives who believe in unfettered gun rights and see the shootings as justified during the chaos that had engulfed the Wisconsin city of Kenosha, while many on the political left have labeled him a vigilante killer.

Rittenhouse faces seven charges, including homicide in the fatal shootings of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and attempted homicide for wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, 27. He has pleaded not guilty.

By midafternoon on Monday, Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder had excused more than a dozen potential jurors, whittling the pool down to 34. Several told the judge they had seen video clips or other evidence that hardened their views on the case, a reflection of the widespread media coverage of the shootings on Aug. 25, 2020.

Some said their views on the case would not change, even if presented with contrary evidence, including a man who cited his beliefs about the American right to bear arms.

The prosecution and defense then started the work of striking seven jury candidates each, with a goal of yielding 20 jurors for the two-week trial. The group will be cut to 12 for final deliberations.

Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger asked potential jurors about whether they had experience with firearms, if they had taken efforts to protect their property on the night of the protests and whether they could make their own decision and not be swayed by family or friends.

Corey Chirafisi, an attorney for Rittenhouse, asked to strike one potential juror who said she would equate bringing an AR-15-style rifle to a protest with guilt.

"I don’t think a weapon like that should belong to the general public," the excused juror said.

With ample video evidence available, there is little dispute over the facts and the two sides will likely focus mainly on how to interpret Wisconsin law, which says people can use deadly force if they "reasonably believe" it necessary to prevent their own death or great bodily harm. read more

YES TO LOOTERS, NO TO VICTIMS

Prosecutors are expected to argue that Rittenhouse, who says he was in Kenosha to help protect a business, was looking for violent conflict and reacted with disproportionate force. They have indicated in past court filings that they plan to argue that the men who were shot had been trying to disarm Rittenhouse because he was a threat to others.

The defense is expected to focus on securing jurors who back the right to bear arms and support law enforcement. It will stress that Rittenhouse feared for his life in each encounter.

Video evidence shows Rosenbaum charging at Rittenhouse, Huber swinging a skateboard at him and Grosskreutz armed with a pistol when he was shot.

Schroeder criticized the 2020 presidential campaigns of both major parties for their comments on the case. Days after the shootings, then-President Donald Trump suggested Rittenhouse had acted in self-defense, while Joe Biden, Trump's Democratic challenger and now president, accused Trump of stoking violence with his rhetoric.

"This case has become very political," Schroeder said.

The judge faced heavy media criticism last week for ruling that the three men shot by Rittenhouse could be labeled looters and arsonists if there was sufficient evidence, while banning the word victim to describe them.

Schroeder took aim at the media in comments to potential jurors warning about avoiding bias.

"We don't want to fall into the trap that many in the media have," he said.

Reporting by Nathan Layne in Kenosha, Wisconsin; Editing by Ross Colvin, Howard Goller and Peter Cooney

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Ghislaine Maxwell loses key rulings ahead of trial for Jeffrey Epstein sex crime case - CNBC

Ghislaine Maxwell on September 20, 2013 in New York City.

Laura Cavanaugh | Getty Images

A judge Monday ruled that prosecutors can refer to accusers of Ghislaine Maxwell as "victims" at the British socialite's upcoming trial in New York on charges of procuring underage girls to be sexually abused by mysterious money man Jeffrey Epstein.

Manhattan federal court Judge Alison Nathan, citing the need to protect Maxwell's accusers from embarrassment, also ruled during a hearing that those women can have their identities kept anonymous during the trial.

Maxwell's lawyers had wanted prosecutors barred from using the word "victim" and "minor" to describe the accusers, and also had wanted them identified during the trial with their real names.

Defense lawyers also lost their bid to be allowed to suggest at trial that prosecutors only filed charges against Maxwell because of press coverage about Epstein and his alleged misdeeds with her.

Also Monday, prosecutors said they had not made any plea offer to Maxwell, such as one in which she would admit guilt to some criminal conduct in exchange for an agreement that prosecutors would seek a less severe punishment than she might get if she were to be convicted at trial.

Prosecutors also said Maxwell likewise had not asked for a plea deal.

"I have not committed any crime," Maxwell, 59, said to Nathan as she confirmed that revelation at the hearing, which dealt with a raft of issues in advance of her trial, due to begin with opening arguments on Nov. 29.

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The hearing came on the same day that Barclays announced its CEO Jes Staley was immediately stepping down after the company became aware of preliminary conclusions by British banking regulators. The officials are investigating how Staley previously characterized his professional relationship with Epstein while serving as head of private banking at JPMorgan Chase.

Epstein, 66, died in August 2019 from what authorities have ruled a suicide by hanging at the Manhattan federal jail where he had been held since the prior month on child sex-trafficking charges.

Epstein, a former friend of ex-Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, previously had dated Maxwell, who also acted as his property manager.

Maxwell has been held without bond since her arrest in July 2020.

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Federal Court Orders Tampa Pharmacy to Close in Case Alleging Unlawful Opioid Distribution - Department of Justice

A federal court in Florida ordered a Tampa-area pharmacy shut down and prohibited two of its employees from ever owning, managing or operating any business where controlled substances are dispensed.

Pursuant to an agreed consent judgment and permanent injunction filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, the court enjoined WeCare Pharmacy, its pharmacist owner Qingping Zhang, pharmacy technician Li Yang and a related corporate entity, L&Y Holdings LLC, from ever owning, managing or operating any business where controlled substances are dispensed. The order also requires the permanent closure and dissolution of WeCare Pharmacy.

The consent decree resolves a civil complaint the government filed earlier this year alleging that the defendants repeatedly dispensed opioids in violation of the Controlled Substances Act. The complaint alleged that over a period of several years, the defendants dispensed highly addictive and highly abused prescription opioids while ignoring “red flags” — that is, obvious indications of drug diversion and drug-seeking behavior. U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven, who entered the order, previously granted the government’s request for a temporary restraining order shortly after the case was filed.

“Pharmacists and those who own and operate pharmacies have a duty to ensure that controlled substances are distributed lawfully,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The Department of Justice will continue to work with its partners to ensure that business owners and medical professionals handling controlled substances do not violate the Controlled Substances Act.”

“Failure to comply with professional standards and protocols while dispensing controlled substances places the public at risk of harm and is a violation of the law,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Karin Hoppmann for the Middle District of Florida. “We will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to enforce the law against those engaged in harmful practices, to keep our citizens safe.”

“Pharmacies have an obligation to ensure controlled substances are dispensed in accordance with the law," said Acting Special Agent in Charge La Verne Hibbert of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Miami Field Division. “When they ignore that obligation, it contributes to the widespread misuse and abuse of prescription opioids that devastate our communities. The DEA Miami Field Division remains committed to working with our law enforcement partners to ensure the health and the safety of our communities.”

The investigation was conducted by the DEA.

The case was handled by Trial Attorneys Scott Dahlquist and Thomas Rosso of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch and Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean P. Keefe for the Middle District of Florida.

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Supreme Court hears arguments on Texas abortion case - NPR

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The Supreme Court will hear arguments Monday on whether the federal government can sue Texas over its controversial law that bans most abortions. Jose Luis Magana/AP

Jose Luis Magana/AP

Abortion rights are front and center at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, but not the way most people expected. The focus will not be on abortion rights, per se, but on the controversial Texas law designed to prevent court challenges.

At issue is whether a state can nullify a constitutional right — in this case the right to abortion — by delegating enforcement not to state officials, but to private citizens who are authorized to sue abortion providers and anyone else who aids or abets an abortion.

This is the second time that the novel Texas law has come before the court. In a midnight ruling two months ago, the court, by a 5-4 vote, allowed the law to go into effect, over the protests of the court's three liberals and its conservative chief justice, John Roberts. The chief justice called the law "unprecedented" because it outsourced enforcement to "the populace at large" in order to "insulate" the state from being held accountable for an apparently unconstitutional law.

The impact of the law

Indeed, those who wrote the law have boasted about how it is designed to avoid review in the federal courts. Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general who conceived of the design that "boxed out the judiciary" from stopping the law, asserts that states "have every prerogative to adopt interpretations of the Constitution that differ from the Supreme Court's."

Specifically, the Texas law, known as S.B. 8, bans abortions after 6 weeks, when many women don't yet know they are pregnant. It contains no exceptions for rape or incest, and it has only a limited and ill-defined exception for a "medical emergency." But most importantly, the law's enforcement mechanism is to allow anyone who aids and abets an abortion to be sued by any private citizen for a minimum of $10,000.

As a result, abortions in Texas have come to a virtual halt.

"The state's gambit has worked. The impact is catastrophic," says Amy Hagstrom Miller, the president and CEO of Whole Women's Health, which runs four clinics in Texas.

The legal arguments at stake

Now, the case is back before the Supreme Court, which has expedited briefing and arguments even more quickly than it expedited the case against then-President Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal in 1974.

And yet a majority of the court has let the Texas law remain in place even as it is being challenged as unconstitutional.

It is a tricky and complicated procedural case that starts with this problem: If the federal government is correct, and the state of Texas is wrongly nullifying a constitutional right, who would the court enjoin — what action would a federal court order prohibit? A federal judge did briefly order state court judges and clerks not to accept any of the lawsuits authorized by the state law, but Howard Wasserman, an expert on legal procedure, says that's "unheard of." It has "never been done before."

And that, he explains, is why the challenge brought by the clinics failed on the first try. But now, the federal government has intervened, contending that under the Constitution, it has the authority to go to court to enforce a constitutional right — a right to abortion that has been established and upheld for nearly half a century.

The government contends that it has an interest that supersedes state interests — namely, protecting the supremacy of the Constitution and preventing the state from nullifying the Supreme Court's constitutional rulings. In addition, the government maintains that it has legal standing to intervene because the Texas law interferes with federal employees, contractors and programs that under federal statutes are charged with facilitating and paying for abortions.

The outlook for the government

Wasserman, a law professor at Florida International University, believes the federal government has a good chance of prevailing.

"I think the court is going to say that the government can bring this suit and it may be informed by the fact that this law is so blatantly invalid under existing precedent," he said.

Therein lies the rub, says Harvard law professor Stephen Sachs, who doubts that the new conservative supermajority will continue to uphold the court's key abortion precedents, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. "It's not at all clear that the Supreme Court would agree that those cases are rightly decided," he observes. "They might say they are so wrongly decided that they have to be overruled."

And that is why abortion providers in Texas have shut down their clinics. Because if Sachs is right, and Texas clinics continue to perform abortions that are later found to be unprotected by the Constitution, the clinics and their personnel could be liable for millions, even billions, of dollars.

There is, after all, a very different way to look at these cases, Sachs argues.

"For the folks who think that Roe was seriously wrongly decided, there's also the consideration that every abortion that doesn't occur is a life saved," he says. "And so it's less clear that they would agree that the only folks being harmed here are those who are prevented from obtaining abortions."

Other abortion challenges on the horizon

Indeed, this is clearly a flexion point for the court on abortion, and likely a moment of transition.

But as professor Mary Ziegler, author of Abortion and the Law in America, observes, this is not the scenario that even the court's most anti-Roe justices likely envisioned.

"I think the Texas case sort of landed in the justices' laps. It wasn't necessarily the case that the conservatives justices wanted to take to rethink Roe. It has a lot of weird aspects to it," she observes.

"It isn't focused in viability, which people had long viewed as a weakness of the original Roe/Casey framework," she adds, noting that it "makes more sense for [the justices] to clear the decks on S.B. 8 and then talk about abortion — in probably the way they had wanted all along — which was through the Dobbs case."

The Dobbs case, long-scheduled to be heard this term, tests Mississippi's law banning abortions after 15 weeks, and is set for oral argument on Dec. 1. It is a classic challenge to Roe v. Wade because a ban on abortions after 15 weeks directly contradicts the court's framework in Roe, namely that a woman has the right to terminate a pregnancy before the fetus is viable — able to survive outside the womb, usually 22 to 24 weeks.

In the meantime, what is the court to do with the Texas law?

How it handles the case could be a "very big deal" because it could have large implications for other rights that could be similarly circumvented, Ziegler says. "Can you do that with guns? Can you do that with religious liberty? Can you do that with freedom of speech? Can you do that with birth control?"

That possibility is why, for instance, a gun rights group — the Firearms Policy Coalition — filed a brief, essentially siding with abortion providers in the Texas case.

But Ziegler thinks it is more likely that there is a fifth vote to punt on the Texas case and to refocus on Dobbs, the Mississippi case. One option "that might be attractive to the court," she says, would be to use the Texas case "as political cover" for whatever it's going to do in the Mississippi case.

That would enable the justices to essentially say, "We're uncomfortable with S.B. 8, or we think that the Justice Department can bring this challenge." In other words, something "that lets them looks less partisan, given that they have been very anxious about appearing partisan."

That, however, would require one of the five justices who have twice voted not to block the Texas law, to relent, at least temporarily.

In the end, of course, nobody knows what the court is going to do. Figuring out what's going on behind the scenes in the marble palace is a bit like Kremlinology.

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A Timeline of the Kyle Rittenhouse Case - The New York Times

Here are the events that led to Mr. Rittenhouse, 18, standing trial in the fatal shootings of two men and the wounding of another in Kenosha, Wis.

Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, will stand trial this week in the fatal shootings of two men and the wounding of another, the result of a confrontation in Kenosha, Wis., last August.

Mr. Rittenhouse has been charged with six criminal counts, including first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide.

Here is a timeline of events leading up to the shootings, and what has happened in the case.

May 25-30, 2020

George Floyd is killed by the police and protests spread across the U.S.

Protests erupted in Minneapolis and other cities around the country in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer. Bystanders recorded video of the officer using his knee to pin Mr. Floyd by his neck during an arrest. Mr. Floyd could be heard repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe,” in the video, as witnesses begged police officers to release him.

Protests erupted in Minneapolis and other cities around the country, including Atlanta, Portland, New York and Chicago, in the days following Mr. Floyd’s death.

Mr. Chauvin, 44, was charged with murder and manslaughter in Mr. Floyd’s death.

On May 30, Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis condemned the continuing destruction in his city, saying that peaceful demonstrations and protests had morphed into “domestic terrorism.” An 8 p.m. curfew was largely being ignored by people who had burned buildings and looted stores.

“We are now confronting white supremacists, members of organized crime, out-of-state instigators, and possibly even foreign actors to destroy and destabilize our city and our region,” he said.

AUG. 23, 2020

Jacob Blake, a Black Kenosha resident, is shot several times by a white officer.

Jacob BlakeAdria-Joi Watkins, via Associated Press

Jacob Blake, a Black Kenosha resident, was shot and seriously wounded by a white police officer, Rusten Sheskey, who had been summoned in response to a domestic complaint by Mr. Blake’s fiancée.

Officer Sheskey and two other officers attempted to take Mr. Blake into custody on an outstanding warrant that had been issued in July on charges of third-degree sexual assault, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.

Mr. Blake fought with the police officers and refused orders to drop a knife, then attempted to open the driver’s side door of a vehicle, as his children sat in the back seat. As he tried to climb into the vehicle, Officer Sheskey grabbed Mr. Blake and shot him seven times, leaving him partly paralyzed.

Aug. 24, 2020

Protesters flood onto the streets of Kenosha.

Protesters in Kenosha on Aug. 24, 2020.Carlos Ortiz for The New York Times

Protests erupted in Kenosha, as hundreds of demonstrators marched through downtown, calling for Officer Sheskey’s arrest. Dozens of people in the crowd set fire to cars, looted and burned buildings and knocked over streetlamps. Gov. Tony Evers sent members of the National Guard to Kenosha to assist local police officers.

Aug. 25, 2020

Kyle Rittenhouse shoots three men, two of them fatally.

Kyle Rittenhouse, left, walking in Kenosha with a military-style semiautomatic rifle, on Aug. 25, 2020.Adam Rogan/The Journal Times, via Associated Press

On the third night of protests, the police and protesters clashed violently at Civic Center Park in front of the heavily barricaded Kenosha County Courthouse. Demonstrators threw water bottles and fireworks at police officers, who responded with tear gas, driving the crowds out of the park and onto side streets.

By late evening, most of the demonstrators had left the area. But dozens of armed protesters and other members of the crowd remained on Sheridan Road, arguing, threatening and shoving each other and occasionally setting fires in garbage cans. Mr. Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Illinois, was walking in the area holding a military-style semiautomatic rifle.

At one point, he was chased into a used car lot by Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, who threw a plastic bag at Mr. Rittenhouse. Mr. Rittenhouse fatally shot Mr. Rosenbaum and ran away, in the direction of the armored vehicles where police officers and National Guardsmen were stationed. Several members of the crowd pursued Mr. Rittenhouse and he shot two of them, killing Anthony Huber, 26, and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, who was 26 at the time.

Aug. 26, 2020

Mr. Rittenhouse is arrested.

Mr. Rittenhouse was arrested on a warrant in Antioch, Wis., on Aug. 26, 2020. Stephen Maturen/Reuters

Mr. Rittenhouse, who had returned to his home in Antioch, Ill., after the shooting, was arrested there the morning after the shootings. He was held in a juvenile detention facility in Lake County, Ill.

Aug. 27, 2020

Homicide charges are filed.

Mr. Rittenhouse was charged with first-degree intentional homicide in the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber.Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated Press

Mr. Rittenhouse was charged with five felonies and a misdemeanor, including two counts of first-degree intentional homicide. The homicide charges, which are equivalent to what other states call murder charges, carry a sentence of life in prison. Mr. Rittenhouse was also charged with recklessly endangering the safety of a video journalist, Richard McGinnis, and for attempted homicide in the shooting of Mr. Grosskreutz. He was charged with a misdemeanor for possessing a weapon as a minor.

Jan. 5, 2021

Mr. Rittenhouse pleads not guilty, and the D.A. says the officer who shot Mr. Blake will not face charges.

Mr. Rittenhouse and his lawyer Mark Richards, during Mr. Rittenhouse’s remote arraignment on Jan. 5. Kenosha County Court, via Reuters

Mr. Rittenhouse pleaded not guilty to the charges in a brief videoconference arraignment.

Michael Graveley, the Kenosha County district attorney, announced that Officer Sheskey would not be charged with a crime.

Mr. Graveley said a case against the officer would have been very hard to prove, in part because it would be difficult to overcome an argument that the officer was protecting himself. He said Mr. Blake had admitted to holding a knife and that statements from officers and other witnesses indicated that Mr. Blake had turned toward an officer with the knife immediately before he was shot.

Nov. 1, 2021

The trial begins.

Jury selection is set to begin on Monday in Mr. Rittenhouse’s trial at the Kenosha County Courthouse, the stage for protests in August 2020. Judge Bruce Schroeder of Kenosha County Circuit Court has summoned 150 potential jurors in advance of the trial, a higher number than is typical, given the media attention that Mr. Rittenhouse’s case has received. The trial is expected to last between two and three weeks.

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Supreme Court won't hear case involving transgender rights - ABC News

The Supreme Court is declining to wade into a case involving transgender rights and leaving in place a lower court decision against a Catholic hospital that wouldn’t allow a transgender man to have a hysterectomy there

ByThe Associated Press

November 1, 2021, 2:34 PM

• 2 min read

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court is declining to wade into a case involving transgender rights and leaving in place a lower court decision against a Catholic hospital that wouldn't allow a transgender man to have a hysterectomy there.

The high court turned away the case Monday without comment, as is typical. Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — said they would have heard the case.

Mercy San Juan Medical Center near Sacramento declined to allow the procedure to be performed at its facility saying it was an “elective sterilization” that violated the hospital’s ethical and religious obligations.

The patient, Evan Minton, got the surgery three days later at a different hospital. He sued under a California law that bars discrimination. A trial court agreed with the hospital that a three-day delay in the procedure did not involve a denial of “full and equal” access to health care under California law. An appeals court reversed that decision.

The high court's decision not to step in is the latest win recently for transgender rights groups at the court. In June, the justices declined to weigh in on a different case involving transgender rights. In that case, the justices rejected a Virginia school board’s appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban. Transgender rights groups and a former high school student had fought in court for six years to overturn the ban.

In 2020, the high court ruled that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment. The 6-3 decision was a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court. The court said a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

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Supreme Court to hear case on New York's gun permit law - Fox News

The Supreme Court is preparing to hear a gun rights case that could lead to more guns on the streets of New York and Los Angeles and threaten restrictions on guns in subways, airports, bars, churches, schools and other places where people gather.

The case the justices will hear Wednesday comes as gun violence has surged, and it could dramatically increase the number of people eligible to carry firearms as they go about their daily lives. The case centers on New York's restrictive gun permit law and whether challengers to the law have a right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense.

Gun control groups say if a high court ruling requires states to drop restrictions, the result will be more violence. Gun rights groups, meanwhile, say the risk of a confrontation is precisely why they have a right to be armed for self-defense.

This Nov. 5, 2020 file photo, shows the Supreme Court in Washington.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Gun rights advocates hope that the court with a 6-3 conservative majority is poised to side with them. They want the court to say the New York law is too restrictive, as are similar laws in other states. Gun control advocates acknowledge the court’s composition has them concerned about the outcome.

LOS ANGELES DINERS ROBBED AT GUNPOINT ON SIDEWALK CAFÉ IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

"The stakes really could not be higher," said Jonathan Lowy, chief counsel at the gun control group Brady.

The court last issued major gun-rights decisions in 2008 and 2010. Those decisions established a nationwide right to keep a gun at home for self-defense. The question for the court now is whether there’s a similar Second Amendment right to carry a firearm in public.

The question isn’t an issue in most of the country, where gun owners have little difficulty legally carrying their weapons when they go out. But about half a dozen states, including populous California and several Eastern states, restrict the carrying of guns to those who can demonstrate a particular need for doing so. The justices could decide whether those laws, "may issue" laws, can stand.

The fact that the high court is hearing a gun rights case at all is a change after years in which it routinely turned them away. One gun case the justices did agree to hear ended anticlimactically in 2020 when the justices threw out the case.

But following the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year and her replacement by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court agreed to wade into the gun debate again.

NRA SEEKS TO REFILE LAWSUIT AGAINST NEW YORK STATE, GOVERNMENT PUSHES BACK

Eric Tirschwell, the legal director at Everytown for Gun Safety, said there’s "reason to be concerned" for groups like his that "a type of law that the court was not interested in or willing to review in the past, they now are."

The New York law the court is reviewing has been in place since 1913 and says that to carry a concealed handgun in public for self-defense, a person applying for a license has to demonstrate "proper cause," an actual need to carry the weapon. When local officials issue a gun license, it’s either unrestricted — allowing the person to carry a gun anywhere not otherwise prohibited by law — or restricted, allowing the person to carry a gun in certain circumstances. That could include carrying a gun for hunting or target shooting, when traveling for work or when in backcountry areas.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 14: Police converge on the scene of a shooting in Brooklyn, one of numerous during the day, on July 14, 2021 in New York City. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, Eric Adams, held a joint news conference in Brooklyn today where the two leaders spoke on the rising rates of gun violence across the city. The governor announced that New York State will shortly offer 4,000 summer jobs and full-time jobs with training for youth in high-crime neighborhoods. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The New York State Rifle & Pistol Association and two private citizens challenging the law have told the Supreme Court that it "makes it effectively impossible for an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to obtain a license to carry a handgun for self-defense."

Lawyers for the group say the text of the Second Amendment, along with history and tradition, supports their argument that there’s a right to carry a gun outside the home. The group also says that New York’s law has discriminatory origins, that it was originally intended to give officials wide latitude to keep guns out of the hands of newly arrived immigrants from Europe, particularly Italians.

New York, for its part, denies that and says that the Second Amendment allows states to restrict the carrying of guns in public. It, too, points to history, tradition and the text of the Second Amendment. The state says its restrictions promote public safety, pointing to research that says that places that restrict the public carry of guns have lower rates of gun-related homicides and other violent crimes. New York says its law isn’t a flat ban on carrying guns but a more moderate restriction.

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Tom King, president of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, said in an interview that part of the problem with New York’s law is that the chances a person will get an unrestricted permit depend on whether he or she is in a rural or more urban area of the state.

Both gun rights and gun control advocates say that it’s unclear how broadly the court might be willing to rule and that they will be closely watching arguments for clues, particularly from the court’s three newest members.

The three appointees of former President Donald Trump — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett — are conservatives but were not on the court when the justices last issued major gun rights rulings. Their actions so far have given gun rights advocates reasons to be hopeful, however.

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather for a formal group portrait to include the new Associate Justice, top row, far right, at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, Friday, Nov. 30, 2018. Seated from left: Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr. Standing behind from left: Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Elena Kagan and Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

In 2011, as an appeals court judge, Kavanaugh argued in a dissent that the District of Columbia’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its gun registration requirement were unconstitutional. Last year, he urged the court to take up another guns case soon, saying he was concerned that lower courts were not following Supreme Court precedent.

Gorsuch, for his part, would have decided the 2020 gun case his colleagues threw out. And Barrett, as an appeals court judge, wrote in a dissent that a conviction for a nonviolent felony shouldn’t automatically disqualify someone from owning a gun; she said her colleagues were treating the Second Amendment as a "second-class right."

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Gun control groups hope, however, that conservatives might still vote to uphold New York's law. A group of prominent conservatives, including former federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, has urged the court to do so in a brief to the court. And earlier this year, in a 7-4 decision, judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to Hawaii’s permit regulations. Conservative judge Jay Bybee wrote that a "review of more than 700 years of English and American legal history reveals a strong theme: government has the power to regulate arms in the public square."

The court’s three liberal justices are widely expected to side with New York.

Depending on what the justices ultimately say, other states’ laws could also be affected. The Biden administration, which is urging the justices to uphold New York’s law, says California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island all have similar laws. Connecticut and Delaware also have "may issue" laws, though they are somewhat different.

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