Teixeira v. County of Alameda, No. 13-17132 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CaseA textual and historical analysis of the Second Amendment demonstrates that the Constitution does not confer a freestanding right on commercial proprietors to sell firearms. The en banc court affirmed the district court's dismissal for failure to state a claim a 42 U.S.C. 1983 suit alleging that the County violated plaintiff's Second Amendment rights, as well as those of his potential customers, when it denied plaintiff conditional use permits to open a gun shop. The panel held that plaintiff failed to plausibly allege that the County's ordinance impedes any resident of Alameda County who wishes to purchase a firearm from doing so, and thus he failed to state a claim for relief based on infringement of the Second Amendment rights of his potential customers. The panel reasoned that plaintiff could not state a Second Amendment claim based solely on the ordinance's restriction on his ability to sell firearms.
Court Description: Civil Rights. The en banc court affirmed the district court’s dismissal, for failure to state a claim, of an action brought pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that the County of Alameda violated the Second Amendment when it denied individual plaintiffs conditional use permits to open a gun shop because the proposed location of the shop fell within a prohibited County zone. The County of Alameda (1) requires firearm retailers to obtain a conditional use permit before selling firearms in the County and (2) prohibits firearm sales near residentially zoned districts, schools and day-care centers, other firearm retailers, and liquor stores. Plaintiffs challenged the County’s zoning ordinance, alleging that by restricting their ability to open a new, full-service gun store, the ordinance infringed on their Second Amendment rights, as well as those of their potential customers. The en banc court held that plaintiffs had not plausibly alleged that the County’s ordinance impeded any resident of Alameda County who wished to purchase a firearm from doing so. Accordingly, plaintiffs failed to state a claim for relief based on infringement of the Second Amendment rights of their potential customers. The en banc court further held that plaintiffs could not state a Second Amendment claim based solely on the ordinance’s restriction on their ability to 4 TEIXEIRA V. COUNTY OF ALAMEDA sell firearms. The panel held that a textual and historical analysis of the Second Amendment demonstrated that the Constitution does not confer a freestanding right on commercial proprietors to sell firearms. Alameda County’s zoning ordinance therefore survived constitutional scrutiny. Concurring, Judge Owens joined all but Part II.D of the majority opinion. In Judge Owens’ view, there was no need to decide whether the Second Amendment guarantees the right to sell firearms because the ordinance at issue here fell within that category of presumptively lawful regulatory measures, and plaintiffs therefore could not state a viable Second Amendment claim. Concurring in part and dissenting in part, Judge Tallman concurred in the majority’s decision to affirm the dismissal of the Second Amendment facial challenge. He dissented from the dismissal of the constitutional challenge as applied to plaintiffs, stating that the majority’s analysis of the Second Amendment challenge to locating a full-service gun shop in an unincorporated area of Alameda County substantially interfered with the right of its customers to keep and bear arms. Dissenting, Judge Bea stated that neither the historical evidence nor the language of District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008) supported the majority’s conclusion that the Second Amendment offers no protection against regulations on the sale of firearms. TEIXEIRA V. COUNTY OF ALAMEDA 5
This opinion or order relates to an opinion or order originally issued on May 16, 2016.
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