Some Amicus Briefs on Peruta v. County of San Diego
Posted: 2015-05-09 11:29pm
Here is an amicus brief by several state governors in Peruta v. County of San Diego. Here are some quotes:
Congress for Racial Equality also filed a brief on the equal protection issues.
It does seem to me that granting government officials unbridled discretion on whether or not to restrain the acts of private citizens would raise serious equal protection issues. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court held that a law that granted people unbridled discretion to "any person, who is willing or desires to sell, lease or rent any part or all of his real property, to decline to sell, lease or rent such property to such person or persons as he..chooses" violates equal protection. See Reitman v. Mulkey, 387 U.S. 369 at 371 (1967)Indeed, no other group of private citizens has to prove—to the satisfaction of a government official vested with unreviewable and boundless discretion—that they really need to exercise their fundamental constitutional freedoms....
Outside of the context of guns, no federal court would countenance any effort by a State to condition the constitutional rights of its citizens on the unreviewable discretion of a sheriff to find “good cause” for their exercise...
But when it comes to regulating gun rights, California thinks that the State can do things that would be unthinkable in other areas of constitutional law. ..
It is settled by a long line of recent decisions of this Court that an ordinance which . . . makes the peaceful enjoyment of freedoms which the Constitution guarantees contingent upon the uncontrolled will of an official—as by requiring a permit or license which may be granted or withheld in the discretion of such official—is an unconstitutional censorship or prior restraint upon the enjoyment of those freedoms. (citation omitted)
Congress for Racial Equality also filed a brief on the equal protection issues.