United States Supreme Court case
United States Supreme Court case
Garland v. VanDerStok (Docket No. 23-852) is a pending United States Supreme Court case regarding the 2021 Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) regulatory revisions of the Gun Control Act of 1986's definitions of firearm, firearm frame, and receiver. On June 30, 2023, federal District Court Judge Reed O'Connor granted a motion for summary judgment against the ATF, vacating the receiver rule nationwide on the grounds that the agency had exceeded its statutory authority.
On August 8, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a stay of Judge O'Connor's nationwide vacatur while the case was on appeal before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. On October 2, 2023, the Fifth Circuit upheld that order, leading the Supreme Court to reissue its stay pending its appeal. On April 22, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States announced it would take up the full case, hearing oral arguments on October 8, 2024.
History.
In August 2022, Jennifer VanDerStok, Tactical Machining, the Mountain States Legal Foundation, and the Firearms Policy Coalition sued to block enforcement of the Gun Control Act on homemade firearms (also known as "ghost guns") made from a weapon parts kit. Between September 2022 and January 2023, Blackhawk Manufacturing Group, Defense Distributed, the Second Amendment Foundation, JSD Supply, and Polymer80 filed motions to intervene based on their unique interests in the case.
The plaintiffs argued that the ATF's 2021 regulations applying provisions of the Gun Control Act violated the Second Amendment and Administrative Procedure Act. Over the course of six months, Judge O'Connor granted partial injunctive relief to many of the plaintiffs before ultimately deciding cross-motions for summary judgment against the ATF, striking down the agency's final rule. The ATF appealed O'Connor's orders to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but the Fifth Circuit upheld the injunction. After both the District Court ruling and Fifth Circuit appeal, the Supreme Court has issued stays pending appeal to delay a nationwide injunction on the ATF's regulations until it decides the case.
Supreme Court.
Oral arguments.
During oral arguments held on October 8, 2024, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar highlighted that the Gun Control Act's serial numbering, record-keeping, and background check requirements must be uniformly applied to all firearm sales to support investigations of gun crimes and deny firearm possession to minors, felons, and domestic abusers. In her view, the ATF's regulation interpreting the Gun Control Act to cover easy-to-assemble weapon parts kits as firearms was consistent with prior regulations that similarly analyzed the assembly time, requisite skill, and availability of additional components in classifying frames and receivers. Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed with Prelogar's position, noting that while ghost guns are a recent phenomenon, the Gun Control Act was enacted with the intent to regulate grenades and machine guns that were typically purchased as their component parts.
Citing the Supreme Court's 1991 decision in "INS v. National Center for Immigrants' Rights", Justice Sonia Sotomayor highlighted that this case's facial pre-enforcement challenge would require the plaintiffs to show that the ATF's regulation deviated from the Gun Control Act's statutory text, rather than simply identifying a product that would be improperly covered under the new regulation. Sotomayor further noted that since the Gun Control Act specifically stakes its authority over starting pistols designed to fire blank cartridges, weapon parts kits similarly qualify for regulation because of their capacity to be readily converted into a working firearm.
Prelogar cited the Supreme Court's 2014 decision in "Abramski v. United States", which held that the Gun Control Act's statutorily ambiguous provisions should be interpreted in ways that do not circumvent its purpose of regulating access to firearms. In his opposing argument, Peter A. Patterson rebutted that Congress' decision to not regulate the secondary market of resold firearms, despite its larger role in criminals acquiring weapons, makes that case's anti-circumvention principle an insufficient defense for this regulation on weapon parts kits.
Patterson advocated for returning to the ATF's prior "critical machining test," which evaluates whether the purchaser must use tools to further modify the frame or receiver before it becomes usable in a firearm. However, most of the justices explicitly rejected this proposal on the basis that agencies are not required to adopt de minimis regulatory interpretations of statutes. In response to questioning on the appeal of weapon parts sold one drilling hole away from assembling a firearm, Patterson claimed that requiring the purchaser to use tools catered to a hobbyist market, which Prelogar rejected because the marketing for these products has focused on their untraceability.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that in applying the Supreme Court's 2024 decision in "Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo", which ended "Chevron" deference to agency interpretations of statutes, courts should only judge whether the agency has acted within its statutory authority, not whether the regulation's scope matches the judge's statutory interpretation.
References.
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