WASHINGTON, D.C. – Attorney General Karl A. Racine today welcomed a decision by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacating, on jurisdictional grounds, a lower court’s decision against a District law requiring individuals applying for concealed-carry permits to state a “good reason to fear injury to his or her person or property” or another reason for carrying a handgun.

The federal appeals court agreed with the District that the lower-court judge who issued the ruling against the gun provision, U.S. Senior District Judge Frederick Scullin, did not have jurisdiction to hear the case. The Court recognized that while Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts had assigned Judge Scullin, who is based on a federal district court in New York, to hear an earlier gun case as a visiting judge in the District, Judge Scullin had not been designated to hear the present case.

“This decision is good news for public safety in the District of Columbia,” Attorney General Racine said. “This ruling increases the likelihood that the case will be heard before a judge from our community – something that we have argued is crucial to understanding the public-safety issues at stake. We believe our concealed-carry law is reasonable and in line with similar laws in New Jersey, New York and Maryland – all of which have been upheld as constitutional by three federal appeals courts.”

Attorney General Racine thanked the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) staff who worked on the case. “Our staff have done extraordinary work in this case – and particularly Deputy Solicitor General Loren AliKhan, who performed brilliantly during oral arguments, and Assistant Attorney General Holly Johnson, who worked tirelessly on the briefs,” he said. “My thanks to them and to the many other OAG staff who worked on this case as well as the state attorneys general and other amici who supported our position in the Circuit.”

A copy of the D.C. Circuit’s opinion in the decision, Wrenn v. D.C., is attached.