C.D. Michel
LOS ANGELES - The state of California has agreed to pay more than $128,000 in attorney fees to the lawyers who represented Second Amendment rights groups and gun owners who challenged California's longstanding and likely unconstitutional regime barring non-California residents from carrying guns in the Golden State, as part of a deal ending the years-long court fight.
The settlement between California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a group of gun owners' rights advocacy groups and individual gun owners was filed in Los Angeles federal court on Feb. 2.
The deal comes four months after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a new gun law, known as AB 1078, which explicitly granted non-Californians the right to apply for a license to conceal and carry firearms in California, formally ending a longstanding ban.
However, the passage of that law only came after Bonta spent nearly two years in court attempting to defend the ban against legal challenges - a defense that continued up until the moment California lawmakers formally changed the law.
Those challenges were launched in 2023 by a coalition of Second Amendment rights groups and other organizations representing gun owners in California and elsewhere in the U.S.
The coalition of challengers included the California Rifle and Pistol Association; The Second Amendment Foundation; Gun Owners of America; Gun Owners Foundation; and Gun Owners of California.
Plaintiffs included several individual gun owners, as well.
Challengers were represented in the action by attorneys Chuck D. Michel, Joshua R. Dale, Konstadinos T. Moros and Alexander A. Frank, of Michel & Associates, of Long Beach; and attorney Don Kilmer, of San Jose.
The lawsuit filed in California Central District federal court took aim at California's web of regulations governing concealed carry of firearms in the state. In the lawsuit, the Second Amendment rights groups asserted California's notoriously anti-gun state and local governments had created the network of varying state and local rules to frustrate gun owners' attempts to secure a license to legally carry a gun for self defense in California.
In the lawsuit, they noted gun owners faced "poll tax" like permitting fees, costing hundreds of dollars, to obtain a conceled carry license in many jurisdictions within the state. And many other jurisdictions would routinely drag their feet on processing and approving such permits, forcing law abiding gun owners with clean records to wait months or longer to obtain the otherwise constitutionally-guaranteed permits and licenses.
Further, the lawsuit particularly challenged California's state law forbidding anyone who was not a California resident from obtaining a concealed carry permit - even when state law also refused to recognize concealed carry permits issued by other states.
The Second Amendment rights groups said such refusal amounted to unconstitutionally singling out the right to carry firearms as the only constitutional right for which California would not grant reciprocity to non-Californians.
They asserted such bans are "blatantly unconstitutional," both under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent recognizing the right to carry guns and another landmark ruling, requiring states to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states, even though marriage rights are not spelled out in the Constitution.
"If California must honor a broad right to marry, which is unenumerated, then it must also honor the right to carry firearms, which is enumerated," the plaintiffs asserted.
On the question of concealed carry, a federal judge would ultimately agree, entering an injunction in early 2025 directing the state to allow out-of-state residents to apply for carry licenses in California.
Even as Bonta continued to defend the non-resident carry ban, California lawmakers moved to change the law to fall into line with the Supreme Court rulings. The new non-resident concealed carry licensing opportunities were included in AB 1078, new legislation trumpeted by Newsom, Bonta and California Democratic state lawmakers as further tightening gun safety rules in the state, "while respecting Second Amendment rights."
The settlement agreement noted the passage of AB 1078 effectively secured a win for the Second Amendment rights advocates in their challenge to California's law, as "qualifying non-resident members may now apply for California (concealed carry) licenses."
California agreed to pay the challengers' lawyers $128,206.50.
