Progress?

In my “docket alerts” over at CourtListener, I have over 30 alerts set. Each alert causes the site to send me email when a case is updated.

I’ve talked about how long it takes to get a case through to completion. The excellent news, today, is that completion now feels like it will be a win for the Second Amendment side.

But I noticed something, we are less than a year out from Bruen and the Supreme Court has already looked at two different cases. They decided against intervening, but this seems to have been done on procedural grounds.

The latest was an appeal from the 7th Circuit court. From the time of the appeal to the time of decision by the Supreme Court was less than 2 weeks. The request was denied. It doesn’t matter.

It is still a win for the Second Amendment.

In the past, 2A cases would languish in Circuit Court limbo for months or even years. The cases were delayed, progress was slow and painful.

The 7th Circuit is one of the courts that has a history of dragging its feet when it comes to Second Amendment rights. As long as the state holds the upper hand, the courts respond slowly.

We have already had the 2nd Circuit Court go from “yeah, we’ll hear the appeal sometime in the future.” to “We will hear oral arguments in 2 months.” The 7th did an instant grant of a stay. It looked like it would be many months before the 7th got around to hearing the case.

Instead, one of the cases was appealed to the Supreme Court. The Court asked for a briefing and within the week the circuit court had scheduled briefings on an extremely tight time frame.

Of those 30+ cases? Nearly half of them are at the Circuit Court level already. Some at the preliminary injunction level but some at the injunction level.

Nobody is sitting still.

I’ve been wrong about some of my timelines.

I believe that what is going to happen is that the Circuit courts are going to delay issuing their opinions until the end of the Supreme Court Term. That will give them a bit of time before the Supreme Court can take new cases.

We might be seeing cases before the Supreme Court by the end of 2023.

It is an interesting time to be involved with the 2A community.