Federalism

Ilya Somin | 8.28.2024 4:25 PM

As co-blogger Jonathan Adler notes, on Monday the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, upheld a trial court decision striking down Missouri's Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA), the state's "gun sanctuary" law. I think the court got the decision wrong. But, in the process, it also essentially laid out a road map by which SAPA and other similar laws could survive judicial scrutiny with only cosmetic changes.

SAPA, like other gun sanctuary laws, bars state and local officials from helping to enforce various federal gun regulations that the state considers to be unconstitutional violations of the Second Amendment. Like the district court, the Eighth Circuit ruling recognizes that "Missouri may lawfully withhold its assistance from federal law enforcement." A long line of Supreme Court decisions has held that the federal government may not "commandeer" state and local governments into helping enforce federal law. In part on that basis, numerous federal court decisions struck down Trump Administration efforts to force liberal sanctuary cities and states to help enforce federal immigration law. Conservative gun sanctuary laws are an imitation of liberal immigration sanctuaries, albeit advancing a right-wing cause rather than a left-wing one.

Nonetheless, the Eighth Circuit struck down........

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