United States District Court Judge John W. Holcomb issued a preliminary injunction against California’s gun show ban on Monday.
The plaintiffs in the case include the Second Amendment Foundation, California Rifle & Pistol Association, the Asian Pacific Americans Gun Owners Association, B & L Productions/Crossroads of the West, Gerald Clark, Eric Johnson, and Chad Littrell.
The lawsuit targeted two statutes, SB 264 and SB 915, which effectively ban gun shows at the Orange County Fairgrounds and, more broadly, state-owned land.
Plaintiffs argued that “the statutes at issue infringe both their First Amendment freedom-of-speech rights in a public forum and their Second Amendment rights to keep and bear arms.”
Holcomb agreed with the plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims, noting:
Here, the Court finds sufficient evidence that SB 264 and SB 915 have a viewpoint-discriminatory purpose. Legislative history shows that the goal of the two statutes is to end gun shows in California, and, while the opinions and statements of legislators are not dispositive of viewpoint discrimination…those statements are circumstantial evidence that the statutes disfavor the lawful commercial speech of firearm vendors.
After testing SB 264 and SB 915 by the Supreme Court of the United States’ Bruen (2022), Holcomb also sided with plaintiffs regarding their Second Amendment claims. He focused on the historical test associated with Bruen and observed, “Defendants are unable to identify a historical analog to SB 264 or SB 915. ”
Holcomb granted the plaintiffs motion for a preliminary injunction and ordered that available dates of usage for the Orange Country Fairgrounds be presented to Crossroads of the West “to reserve dates for gun show events (and to hold such events)…[like] any other event promoter who has previously held events at the Orange County Fairgrounds.”
The case is B & L Productions v. Newsom, No. 8:22-cv-01518 in the United State District Court for the Central District of California.
