Oral arguments During oral arguments held on October 8, 2024, Solicitor General
Elizabeth Prelogar highlighted that the Gun Control Act's
serial numbering,
record-keeping, and
background check requirements must be uniformly applied to all firearm sales to support investigations of gun crimes and deny firearm possession to minors, felons, and domestic abusers. In her view, the ATF's regulation interpreting the Gun Control Act to cover easy-to-assemble weapon parts kits as firearms was consistent with prior regulations that similarly analyzed the assembly time, requisite skill, and availability of additional components in classifying frames and receivers. Associate Justice
Amy Coney Barrett agreed with Prelogar's position, noting that while ghost guns are a recent phenomenon, the Gun Control Act was enacted with the intent to regulate
grenades and
machine guns that were typically purchased as their component parts. Citing the Supreme Court's 1991 decision in ''
INS v. National Center for Immigrants' Rights'', Justice
Sonia Sotomayor highlighted that this case's
facial pre-enforcement challenge would require the plaintiffs to show that the ATF's regulation deviated from the Gun Control Act's statutory text, rather than simply identifying a product that would be improperly covered under the new regulation. Sotomayor further noted that since the Gun Control Act specifically stakes its authority over
starting pistols designed to fire
blank cartridges, weapon parts kits similarly qualify for regulation because of their capacity to be readily converted into a working firearm. In response to questioning on the appeal of weapon parts sold one drilling hole away from assembling a firearm, Patterson claimed that requiring the purchaser to use tools catered to a hobbyist market, which Prelogar rejected because the marketing for these products has focused on their untraceability. Justice
Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that in applying the Supreme Court's 2024 decision in
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, which ended
Chevron deference to agency interpretations of statutes, courts should only judge whether the agency has acted within its statutory authority, not whether the regulation's scope matches the judge's statutory interpretation.
Decision In a majority opinion written by Associate Justice
Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court ruled that the ATF's 2021 regulations were not facially inconsistent with the Gun Control Act,
remanding the case to the Fifth Circuit for further proceedings. Under a
facial challenge, the plaintiffs needed to prove that the regulations would be inconsistent with the statute in all applications, whereas Gorsuch considered
Polymer80's kits comparable to the starting pistols explicitly covered as weapons under the statute. Gorsuch similarly deemed the Gun Control Act's use of "frame" and "receiver" as referring to some unfinished products, given that the ATF had regulated some unfinished frames and receivers in prior decades.
Concurrences Associate Justices
Sonia Sotomayor,
Brett Kavanaugh, and
Ketanji Brown Jackson filed
concurring opinions. Kavanaugh advised the federal government to not charge those unaware that a weapon parts kit must be sold with a
background check, while Sotomayor's concurrence considered such
mens rea concerns negligible because firearm manufacturers regularly submit their products to the ATF for clarification on whether they are covered entities.
Dissents Associate Justices
Clarence Thomas and
Samuel Alito filed
dissenting opinions. Thomas argued that whereas the
Federal Firearms Act of 1938 explicitly covered weapon parts, the wording of the Gun Control Act of 1968 did not. Furthermore, Thomas opined that whereas
United States v. Salerno required facial challenges against a statute to prove that all applications would be unconstitutional, facial challenges against a regulatory definition should only involve comparison against the statutory text. Alito reiterated the latter point, claiming that facial challenges should be easier to mount against agencies than legislatures because only the latter are mentioned in the Constitution. ==References==