In the 2024 session, the Maine Legislature passed a bill that added us to a list of 12 other states with mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. In the public testimony on the bill, many groups spoke out against the effects this law may have on businesses, domestic violence victims, and hunters. Despite the potential conflict that a waiting period law might have with Mainers’ gun rights, the bill passed. But now, a new lawsuit has been initiated to undo it.
On November 13, several Mainers filed suit against Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey requesting that a federal court permanently stop Maine from enforcing this law. While waiting periods like this may potentially conflict with the Supreme Court’s recent pro-second amendment Bruen decision, the plaintiffs will have an uphill battle to defeat this law.
Maine is far from the first state to have a mandatory waiting period, and similar lawsuits have already failed in other states. Most recently, in Vermont, a lawsuit was filed against their 2023 mandatory waiting period law and the court ruled in favor of the state in that case. There are some saving graces for Maine’s lawsuit that distinguish it from the other failed suits, but the battle will still be difficult if the plaintiffs are to win.
This battle would likely not have happened a few years ago, as this lawsuit rests mainly on the 2022 Supreme Court case NYSRPA v. Bruen. Before Bruen, courts would weigh the individual right to bear arms against the general public welfare when analyzing gun laws. While public welfare is still relevant, the Supreme Court ruled in Bruen that gun rights restrictions must also pass an extra test. To be constitutionally valid, a restriction on guns must either not conflict with “the right to bear arms,” or there must be a strong history of that kind of gun regulation in the United States.
While this ruling has been considered a significant win for gun rights groups, the verdict did open a massive bag of worms for courts because they must now ask, “What does it mean for a gun regulation to have a strong history?” In the case of mandatory waiting periods, gun rights groups have pointed out that most of these laws are pretty recent. Meanwhile, waiting period supporters counter that other kinds of temporary access restrictions have existed in the United States for a long time. Despite the complexity of this new area of law, it does appear that the battle may be uphill for a few reasons.
First, of the states with mandatory waiting period laws, Colorado is the only state with Second Amendment protective constitutional language similar to Maine’s. While both states say the right to bear arms shall not be “questioned,” Colorado’s is still more limited and excludes several Second Amendment categories.
In this case, the problem with relying on the Maine Constitution is that this is a federal court, meaning it will primarily focus on federal legal issues, leaving state issues to states. The current filing thus emphasizes the U.S. Constitution’s second amendment, which means that if Maine’s U.S. District Court ruled for the plaintiffs, the ruling would directly conflict with the Vermont case.
The good news for the plaintiffs in Maine is that Vermont (along with Connecticut) is one of the two New England states in the Second Federal Circuit rather than the First. This means the two courts could technically disagree on interpreting the Second Amendment and there wouldn’t be any significant problems. However, the Vermont case likely indicates that New England courts, mainly, are likely to interpret waiting period laws as not conflicting with the U.S. Constitution.
With the new, far-reaching interpretation of the Second Amendment after the Bruen case, the plaintiffs may have to appeal to the Supreme Court to have the waiting period law removed. Because this avenue of relief could take years and may fail, the chances of this lawsuit successfully stopping the waiting period law from going into effect appear slim at the outset.