Court spikes city’s gun rule

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Monday that the Second Amendment provides all Americans a fundamental right to bear arms, a long-sought victory for gunrights advocates who have chafed at federal, state and local efforts to restrict gun ownership.

The ruling, while not creating an unlimited right for individuals to carry weapons, restricts the power of cities and states to regulate firearms. A 5-4 majority said Chicago went too far by banning handguns even forself-defense in the home. The Chicago ordinance is now unenforceable, its mayor said, though the law stays in effect pending lower court proceedings.

The ruling said states and cities can ban possession by convicted felons and mentally ill people and create laws against bringing guns into schools or government buildings.

Chicago is the only major city with a blanket handgun ban after a 2008 Supreme Court decision struck down a similar ban in Washington, D.C., a federal enclave. Jurisdictions with narrower weapons restrictions, including New York City, may now face new legal challenges.

The right to bear arms “is fully binding on the states and thus limits (but by no means eliminates) their ability to devise solutions to social problems that suit local needs and values,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court.

The justices said a constitutional amendment approved after the Civil War protects the right to bear arms as a key freedom, shielding it from state and local interference.

“It is clear that the framers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty,” Alito wrote.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined Alito in the majority.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer faulted the majority for “transferring ultimate regulatory authority over the private uses of firearms from democratically elected legislatures to courts or from the states to the federal government.”

Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor also dissented.

Monday’s ruling broadens the sweep of the court’s 2008 ruling interpreting the Constitution’s Second Amendment as protecting the rights of individuals, rather than just those of state-run militias. It’s a victory for the National Rifle Association, which joined a group of Chicago residents in challenging the city’s laws.

The high court’s 2008 decision said the right to bear arms had limits. Alito wrote that Monday’s decision reaffirmed those limits, saying the ruling “does not imperil every law regulating firearms.”

Rep. Mike Ross, a Democrat from Arkansas, led efforts in the House last year to file a friend of the court brief in support of reversing lower court decisions that upheld gun restrictions.

The House passed a resolution, with support of 251 members, in support of the resolution, which Ross and Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, pushed.

“The Supreme Court has now ruled the Second Amendment is a fundamental, individual right applicable to all the states - not just the federal government - and I commend its decision,” Ross said in a statement.

In addition to Ross, Rep. Marion Berry, a Democrat, and Rep. John Boozman, a Republican, voted for the measure, and Rep. Vic Snyder, a Democrat, did not. In the Senate, Arkansas’ Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat, voted for a similar resolution while Sen. Mark Pryor, also a Democrat, did not.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said he was “disappointed but not surprised.”

Like the rest of the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment was originally aimed only at the federal government. The Supreme Court in the 19th century refused to apply the Second Amendment to the states.

More recently, the court has said that some, though not all, of the rights in the first eight amendments are so fundamental that they are “incorporated” into the 14th Amendment’s due process clause, which binds the states.

The case “is likely the last great incorporation battle,” said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. “In one sense, this is the last battle of the Civil War.The 14th Amendment was designed to ensure that all Americans enjoyed the same fundamental rights, including the right to bear arms. Now the Second Amendment applies to everyone.”

The 28-year-old Chicago ban was challenged by four residents, including Otis Mc-Donald, a 76-year-old homeowner in the Morgan Park neighborhood on the city’s South Side.

McDonald, who said his home has been broken into at least three times, said he wants to keep a handgun by his bed for protection.

The case is 08-1521, McDonald v. City of Chicago.

STUDENT GROUPS

In another case, the court ruled Monday that a public law school in San Francisco didn’t violate the rights of a Christian student group by denying it recognition because it limits participation by nonbelievers and gays.

The justices, voting 5-4, upheld Hastings College of Law’s “all-comers” policy, which requires unrestricted membership for campus student groups. The policy doesn’t infringe First Amendment rights, the court said.

“Hastings, caught in the crossfire between a group’s desire to exclude and students’ demand for equal access, may reasonably draw a line in the sand permitting all organizations to express what they wish but no group to discriminate in membership,” Ginsburg wrote for the majority.

Kennedy, Stevens, Breyer and Sotomayor joined Ginsberg in the majority.

In dissent, Alito said the majority “arms public educational institutions with a handy weapon for suppressing the speech of unpopular groups.” Roberts, Scalia and Thomas also dissented.

Alito said the ruling conflicted with a 2000 Supreme Court decision that said the Boy Scouts may bar a gay scoutmaster.

“The First Amendment shields the right of a group to engage in expressive association by limiting membership to persons whose admission does not significantly interfere with the group’s ability to convey its views,” Alito wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Kennedy said those interests had to yield to the legitimate right of the law school to foster tolerance and cooperation among students of different backgrounds and viewpoints.

“A vibrant dialogue is not possible if students wall themselves off from opposing points of view,” Kennedy wrote.

The law school argued that the Christian Legal Society could retain its membership policies - and still have access to unused classroom space and other facilities - as a non-recognized group.

The case is 08-1371, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. ACCOUNTING BOARD

Also on Monday, the court left intact the centerpiece of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act while ruling that the executive branch should have more authority over members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

The 5-4 decision said the 2002 law passed in response to accounting frauds at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. didn’t give the president enough say over the board created by the act. The Securities and Exchange Commission must have unfettered power to fire the board’s chairman and members in order for it to adhere to separation of powers provisions in the Constitution, the high court ruled.

“No one doubts Congress’s power to create a vast and varied federal bureaucracy,” Roberts wrote in the majority decision. “But where, in all this, is the role for oversight by an elected president?”

Congress created the five member board to replace a system in which the accounting industry policed itself. The SEC oversees the board by appointing its chairman and members, approving its budget and signing off on its rules. The SEC can only terminate a board member for cause.

Beckstead and Watts LLP, a Henderson, Nevada-based accounting firm, and a group advocating for limited government challenged the board’s constitutionality in a lawsuit. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that because the president lacked control, the board “and all power and authority exercised by it” violated the constitution.

“We reject such a broad holding,” Roberts wrote. “Instead, we agree with the government that the unconstitutional tenure provisions” don’t undermine the entire Sarbanes-Oxley law.

Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy joined Roberts’ majority opinion.

In dissent, Breyer said the majority’s reasoning raised constitutional questions about a myriad of other government entities.

The decision “will create an obstacle, indeed pose a serious threat, to the proper functioning of that workable government that the Constitution seeks to create,” Breyer wrote.

Stevens, Ginsburg and Sotomayor also dissented.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, in a statement, said she’s “pleased that the court has determined that the board’s operations may continue.” The accounting board, in a statement, said no legislation is needed to make the board’s structure constitutional.

The case is 08-861, FreeEnterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

Information for this article was contributed by Greg Stohr, Jesse Westbrook, William McQuillen, Carlyn Kolker and John McCormick of Bloomberg News and by Alex Daniels of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.