Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
A development in a Second Amendment case in New York death is the latest example of how the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is forcing appellate litigants to rethink their legal strategies.
Reports the New York Daily News:
The state Rifle and Pistol Association decided against filing a petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case fearing the conservative Scalia’s death will make winning the case virtually impossible.
King said his lawyers advised that going forward could damage the case because the High Court at the very least would likely deliver a split 4-4 decision that would leave the law in place.
“It’s just the wrong time,” Tom King, the president of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, one of the plaintiffs challenging the New York law, told the Daily News. “The 2nd Amendment is our client and that’s what we have to protect.”
The plaintiffs were challenging key parts of a sweeping package of gun-control restrictions known as the “Safe Act” that New York passed shortly after the December 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Conn.
The Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in October ruled that sections of the law expanding the definition of prohibited automatic and semiautomatic weapons are constitutional. After that ruling, the plaintiffs said they would like take the case to the Supreme Court.
The decision by the plaintiffs to hold off comes just days after reports that Dow Chemical Co.DOW -1.90% had agreed to pay $835 million to settle a class-action case rather than risk an appeal without the conservative justice.