Today, two cases challenging California laws were appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
The first case challenges Assembly Bill 173. That bill allows the state to disclose gun owners’ highly sensitive information to universities for “research” purposes. That information includes the individual’s name, address, place of birth, phone number, occupation, driver’s license or ID number, race, sex, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and even their social security number and types of firearms that they own. This information was gathered from law-abiding gun owners with the understanding that it would only be used for legitimate law enforcement purposes when they acquired their firearms.
The lawsuit was filed to stop the Attorney General from turning that data over. And during the course of the litigation, the Attorney General repeatedly assured the court that gun owners’ personal information would be kept safe. But those promises turned out to be empty when the California Department of Justice posted thousands of gun owners’ personal information on its website last summer. A federal judge, nevertheless, ruled that the state did not violate the people’s Second Amendment privacy rights in doing so.
The Second lawsuit challenges AB 2571. The bill vaguely and broadly prohibits any advertisement promoting firearms that “appears to be attractive to minors.” The bill lists several vague factors that indicate whether something would be attractive to minors, including colors or caricatures that minors might find attractive or featuring a minor in an advertisement.
As we pointed out when the suit was filed, the state banned these advertisements despite having an official policy of trying to recruit more youth hunters and shooters through creative marketing. And yet again, a federal judge, nevertheless, ruled that the state could ban truthful advertisements under the First Amendment.
We look forward to reversing these decisions on appeal.
The cases are captioned Doe v. Bonta and Safari Club International v. Bonta.
Please stay tuned to www.nraila.org for future updates on NRA-ILA’s ongoing efforts to defend your constitutional rights.