By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court passed up a chance on Tuesday to consider the legality of laws that restrict people ages 18 to 20 from purchasing or using firearms, one of the areas of contention following its expansion of gun rights in recent years.
The justices turned away appeals challenging a federal ban on handgun purchases by people ages 18 to 20, as well as a similar state law in Florida imposing the same age requirement on all firearms purchases. Lower courts rejected the arguments by plaintiffs in those cases that those laws violate the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The Supreme Court’s rejection of Democratic-governed Pennsylvania’s appeal in another case, however, left in place a lower court’s ruling that the state’s laws that ban people ages 18 to 20 from carrying firearms in public during a declared state of emergency violate the Second Amendment.
There have been numerous challenges brought against gun restrictions at the state and federal levels since the Supreme Court further widened gun rights in a landmark 2022 ruling that recognized for the first time a right under the Second Amendment to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.
That ruling, in a case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, established a stringent new test to gauge whether a gun restriction complies with the Second Amendment, requiring that any such measures be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Gun rights for people ages 18 to 20 have been a priority for pro-gun organizations since the 2022 ruling, which struck down New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns.
Lower courts have split over the constitutionality of laws that restrict people of that age range from purchasing or using firearms.
The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025 dismissed a challenge to the federal restrictions, even after applying the Supreme Court’s new test.
“From English common law to America’s founding and beyond, our regulatory tradition has permitted restrictions on the sale of firearms to individuals under the age of 21,” the 4th Circuit’s ruling stated.
The decision contrasted with one also issued last year by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled against the federal age prohibition on Second Amendment grounds. That ruling applies only in the three states — Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas — where the 5th Circuit has jurisdiction.
Other courts also have ruled against state restrictions. The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a challenge to Pennsylvania’s age minimum for carrying firearms during an emergency. And in 2024, the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit invalidated Minnesota’s age minimum for obtaining a permit to carry a handgun in public.
The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, in 2023 upheld Florida’s requirement that a person must be at least 21 years old to buy a gun, a law enacted after a 2018 massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
In a nation bitterly divided over how to address firearms violence including frequent mass shootings, the Supreme Court often has taken an expansive view of the Second Amendment. It broadened gun rights in landmark rulings in 2008 and 2010 before the 2022 decision.
The court expanded Second Amendment rights in two rulings during its current term.
On June 26, the court struck down a Hawaii law restricting the carrying of handguns on private property open to the public, like most businesses, without the owner’s permission. On June 18, it limited the application of a decades-old federal law that bars firearms possession by certain drug users, narrowing a measure that had threatened the gun rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana and own firearms.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
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