Gun Litigation Will Keep Federal Appeals Courts Busy in 2025

AR-15 bans, gun-free parks, and felon disarmament measures are among the issues before federal appeals courts in 2025.

Circuit court dockets will be filled with firearm-related cases next year as judges consider a raft of state and federal restrictions after recent US Supreme Court rulings.

Attorneys, academics, and activists are looking to see how wide a historical lens courts apply when assessing the constitutionality of gun laws.

The high court’s 2024 United States v. Rahimi opinion and its N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen ruling in 2022 require gun restrictions to comport with history and tradition. But some circuits have read Rahimi as calling for an assessment of whether the underlying principle behind a restriction has a historical match, rather than requiring a one-to-one match with a past regulation.

There are also expectations that the incoming Trump administration may take a more gun-friendly approach than the outgoing Biden administration. That could impact whether Department of Justice lawyers appeal losses in gun-related prosecutions.

These are some of the questions circuit courts are facing in 2025:

What Type of Weapon?

Illinois’ ban on assault weapons like the AR-15 will face the Seventh Circuit. The Chicago-based court will rule on an appeal of a decision that the ban is unconstitutional. The Seventh Circuit already stayed the trial court’s ruling—allowing the ban to remain in effect during the appeal.

New Jersey’s assault weapons ban is before the Philadelphia-based Third Circuit after a district court ruling striking part of the ban as unconstitutional. A challenge to Massachusetts’s assault weapons ban is pending in the Boston-based First Circuit after a lower court upheld it.

States have fended off challenges in the circuits to such restrictions so far. The full Fourth Circuit in August upheld Maryland’s assault weapons ban.

But because more conservative states haven’t passed such bans, they haven’t made their way to more conservative circuit courts—"so it’s very hard to get a split on this,” said Robert Leider, a professor at Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University.

The Supreme Court could weigh in nevertheless, potentially throwing a wrench into circuit court litigation. The justices are deciding whether to hear a challenge to the Fourth Circuit’s decision.

Whose Firearm?

While a federal statute bans people with past felony convictions from possessing a gun, circuit courts are deciding which past convictions, if any, can merit disarmament under Bruen. A circuit split on the issue could widen.

The full Ninth Circuit is considering whether the statute can be constitutionally enforced against a man with a nonviolent vandalism conviction. An earlier panel ruling that the statute is unconstitutional as applied to that defendant was vacated when the Ninth Circuit voted to rehear the case en banc.

Josh Blackman, a professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, is looking to see how incoming president Donald Trump will impact some of the cases. If appeals courts rule in favor of the gun owners in felon-in-possession cases where nonviolent prior felonies are at issue, “the Trump DOJ may not appeal that,” he said.

The landscape could get fractious. The Third Circuit said the law can’t be enforced against a man with a past fraud conviction. The Eighth Circuit held that the statute is constitutional in all applications, including nonviolent felonies.

Then there’s the issue of age restrictions.

The full Eleventh Circuit will rule on Florida’s law banning gun sales to people under 21. The law was adopted in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that was carried out by a 19-year-old gunman.

Pennsylvania’s law barring gun sales to people 18-to-20 is before the Third Circuit. The Supreme Court vacated the appeals court’s earlier ruling against the measure for reconsideration in light of Rahimi.

In age restriction and other cases, Shira Feldman, director of constitutional litigation at Brady United Against Gun Violence, said she’s looking to see how far back the courts consider historical analogies.

While some courts have said the government must show an analogy from 1791—when the Second Amendment was ratified—others have looked to 1868, when it became applicable to the states, and more recent history. The Supreme Court hasn’t answered that question.

Advocates for gun control like Feldman believe the right approach is to consider the more recent history. “It’s continuing to play out in the circuit courts,” she said.

Where’s the Gun?

Location-based gun restrictions are also on tap in the circuit courts.

Maryland’s ban on guns in schools and parks is before the Fourth Circuit after a district court upheld those provisions. Illinois’ bar on guns in public transit is before the Seventh Circuit after a district court said it was unconstitutional.

A circuit split is “almost inevitable” because courts are deciding, location by location, if state restrictions are constitutional, Leider said.

Hawaii’s ban on guns at beaches was upheld by the Ninth Circuit in September, while the same circuit struck down California’s public transit restriction.

Overall, the year should be busy because Second Amendment jurisprudence is underdeveloped, Leider said, compared with constitutional issues like free speech and police searches that were litigated throughout the 20th century.

While the Supreme Court in 2008 ruled that there’s an individual constitutional right to bear arms, “that didn’t answer the million questions that follow,” he said.