A Minnesota law restricting adults younger than 21 from obtaining a permit to carry a firearm is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled, marking a victory for gun rights advocates.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down the opinion on Tuesday, affirming a ruling by U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez last year that prohibited Minnesota from denying 18-to-20-year-olds from getting a permit to carry.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison can appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Members of three firearms rights groups filed the original complaint in 2021 against their respective sheriffs in Douglas, Mille Lacs and Washington counties. The plaintiffs were all gun owners older than 18 but younger than 21 who argued Minnesota’s age restriction on acquiring a permit to carry infringed on their Second and 14th Amendment rights.

Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson — whose agency is in charge of enforcing the permit to carry statute — joined the case as a defendant and appealed the original decision.

The gun rights organizations that brought the lawsuit — the Second Amendment Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus — celebrated Tuesday’s ruling.

“This is a resounding victory for 18-to-20-year-old adults who wish to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms,” Bryan Strawser, chair of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said in a statement.

Judge Duane Benton authored the three-judge panel’s decision. He wrote that the Minnesota statute is inconsistent with “this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” and argued the state’s age limit of 21 relied on an obsolete common law definition of those who possessed all their “civil and political rights.”

“Even if the 18 to 20-year-olds were not members of the ‘political community’ at common law, they are today,” Benton wrote, citing constitutional amendments that expanded voting rights to nonwhites, women and people over 18.

He also argued that Minnesota’s other restrictions on obtaining a permit to carry, such as requirements that applicants complete a training course and not be affiliated with a gang investigation, already “reduce the risk of danger” in ways that an age limit does not.

The ruling leaned heavily on a 2022 Supreme Court case, known as the Bruen decision, that enshrined the right to publicly bear arms for self-defense.

Ellison decried Tuesday’s ruling and said the Bruen decision “open[ed] the floodgates to litigation from gun advocacy groups looking to undo reasonable safety legislation.”

“The people of Minnesota want and deserve solutions that reduce shootings and improve public safety, and today’s ruling only makes that more difficult,” the attorney general wrote in a statement. “Despite this setback, I remain as committed as ever to improving public safety in Minnesota by championing and defending lifesaving, common-sense gun violence prevention measures.”

“I think that the Eighth Circuit got it wrong here. I think that that’s the top line message,” said Esther Sanchez-Gomez, with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of the appellants.

“We need to really be thinking about this from a place of common sense, looking to history, but also looking to the reality of gun violence in our country today,” Sanchez-Gomez added. 

Moving forward, she hopes decision-makers give thought to everyone who is impacted.

“Gun violence is an issue that affects not just the people who carry guns, but the people who are shot with guns. And so we need to be balancing the government and the public’s interest in having safer communities with this individual right,” Sanchez-Gomez said.