Minn. AG Keith Ellison asks appeals court to review state’s age limit for carrying handguns in public

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wants the full Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to examine the state’s age limit for publicly carrying handguns after a three-judge panel ruled it unconstitutional this month.

The panel’s July 16 ruling made it the first federal circuit court to reject a “general age-based gun regulation,” Ellison’s office said Tuesday in its 25-page petition to the circuit. The decision could have broader implications for similar restrictions in 30 states and the District of Columbia.

In asking for a wider court review, Solicitor General Liz Kramer argued that the three-judge panel failed to account for the Supreme Court’s June decision in United States v. Rahimi upholding the constitutionality of state laws restricting domestic abusers from possessing firearms. Kramer pointed out that the panel issued its opinion in Minnesota’s open carry lawsuit without allowing briefing from either side on how the Rahimi decision affected the litigation.

In a statement Tuesday, Ellison said that the court “reached the wrong conclusion on the facts and the history,” especially given the recent high court ruling in Rahimi. He described Tuesday’s petition as “the next logical step in attempting to reverse the panel’s decision.”

“The public safety benefits to banning open carry by people under 21 years of age are clear,” Ellison said. “As long as I am your Attorney General, Minnesota will defend lifesaving, common-sense, gun safety laws.”

The lawsuit challenging Minnesota’s open-carry age restrictions has been working its way through federal court since 2021, when three gun-rights advocacy groups and three young adults sued Minnesota’s public safety commissioner and the sheriffs of the plaintiffs’ respective counties — Douglas, Mille Lacs and Washington — arguing that the age restrictions violated their Second Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez — a 2021 appointee of President Joe Biden — sided with the plaintiffs in a ruling last year that turned on recent Supreme Court guidance that governments seeking to limit gun rights must show that their laws are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.”

The Eighth Circuit panel this month agreed with Menendez’s opinion that Minnesota had not demonstrated that its age restriction was consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation, a precedent established in the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling striking down New York’s ban on carrying guns in public.

But Kramer wrote in Tuesday’s petition that, in its Rahimi decision, the Supreme Court acknowledged that other courts have “misunderstood” its methodology in recent Second Amendment cases — chiefly the 2022 New York case. Kramer argued that Minnesota’s 2003 age-limit law needn’t be “identical” or a perfect match for founding era gun laws. Menendez, she wrote, “did not understand” that she “could consider all the evidence cumulative proffered by Minnesota and evaluate whether a consistent principle of regulation” supported the age restriction.

Minnesota has explained that its carry ban was in place because 18- to 20-year-olds are not competent to make responsible decisions with guns and pose a risk of being dangerous to themselves and to others as a result. But Judge Duane Benton wrote in the panel’s July 16 ruling that Minnesota failed to support that claim with enough evidence.

“Instead of correcting the district court’s error, the panel decision repeats it,” Kramer wrote. “It never once attempts to identify the principle or principles that underpin our nation’s long tradition of regulating public gun use by young people as required by Rahimi.”

Menendez last year stayed a ruling that would have immediately prevented Minnesota from imposing such restrictions until the appeals process was exhausted.

Permit applications are managed by county sheriffs throughout the state, and at least one sheriff has since tried to clarify the implications of the ongoing litigation. Blue Earth County Sheriff Jeff Wersal issued a news release Tuesday noting that while his office has received multiple permit-to-carry applications from people younger than 21, the age restriction is still effective because Ellison’s appeal is ongoing.

“The Sheriff’s Office intends to send updates but is asking those under 21-years-old to be patient and await the conclusion of the court case before applying for a permit,” Wersal said.