Gun owners upset Supreme Court let San Francisco law stand

Under lock and key. The U.S. Supreme Court upset Second Amendment advocates last week by not taking a case, and two justices who would have taken it issued a harsh rebuke. The court let stand a federal appellate ruling requiring residents of San Francisco to keep their guns in a locked container or disabled unless they are carrying them on their person. Six gun owners, among others, sued to overturn the law. They argued the law compromises their right to self-defense at a time when they are at their most vulnerable—at home, asleep, at night.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said gun owners can open a modern gun safe quickly enough, and that made it a reasonable rule.

The Supreme Court followed its custom of not explaining why it won’t take a case, but the dissent rebuked the court. A delay in accessing a weapon, wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, “could easily be the difference between life and death.”

Place of birth. In a 6-3 decision last week, a Supreme Court case that started as a child’s passport dispute grew into a question of foreign relations and the separation of federal powers. The case involves Menachem Zivotofsky, born in Jerusalem in 2002 to American parents. They wanted their son’s U.S. passport to list “Israel” as his place of birth, but the United States has not recognized any nation’s sovereignty over Jerusalem since 1948, the creation of the modern Israeli state.

Months before Zivotofsky was born, Congress passed a law allowing all Jerusalem-born Americans to list Israel on their passports. President George W. Bush signed the law, but said his State Department wouldn’t follow it because it would interfere with the executive branch’s conduct of foreign policy. The Zivotofskys sued and ultimately lost. The high court ruled the president, not Congress, has exclusive power to recognize foreign nations.

Chief Justice John Roberts said in his dissent that this case was about a citizen’s right to identify his own birthplace, not a matter of recognizing national sovereignty. But the ruling does have implications on dealings between the president and Congress, said professor Lelia Sadat of Washington University in St. Louis: “It’s the same tension we’re seeing played out in Congress trying to in a sense to tie the president’s hands in negotiations with Iran and saying, well we’ll pass legislation that might undo an agreement for example that the president might enter into … but for now we have six justices of the Supreme Court siding squarely with the president on this issue.”

Crunch time. As of this morning, the Supreme Court has 20 cases to release decisions on before it wraps up its term near the end of this month. Usually, the high court issues opinions on Mondays. Already, it’s added this Thursday as an additional opinion release day. That leaves four release days, including this one, before the end of the term. The court would have to average five cases per day to get it all done, add more opinion days, or extend the term into July.

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