The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a Second Amendment challenge to Minnesota’s refusal to recognize concealed-carry permits issued by Georgia and Florida, leaving in place an appellate ruling that states are not constitutionally required to grant reciprocity to another state’s permits.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear a challenge to Minnesota’s refusal to recognize concealed-carry permits from Georgia and Florida, leaving unresolved a broader constitutional question over whether Americans’ right to carry firearms for self-defense must receive the same permit recognition when they cross state lines.
The justices included Johnson v. Jacobson, No. 26-255, among the petitions denied without comment in their Oct. 5 order list.
The decision leaves intact a May ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that upheld Minnesota’s system. As is customary when the Supreme Court denies review, the justices gave no explanation, and the denial does not constitute an endorsement of the lower court’s reasoning or establish a nationwide precedent.
The dispute began in January 2025 when the Liberty Justice Center filed a federal constitutional challenge against Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson on behalf of David A. McCoy II and Jeffrey M. Johnson Sr.
Johnson, a Georgia resident and long-haul truck driver, holds carry permits issued by Georgia and Florida and wants to carry a handgun while traveling through Minnesota.
Minnesota, however, does not recognize permits from either state.
Under Minnesota law, people generally must have a Minnesota permit or a permit from a state whose licensing system Minnesota recognizes in order to carry a pistol publicly. Minnesota recognizes permits from states it determines have sufficiently similar requirements.
Nonresidents are permitted to apply for a Minnesota carry permit, but Johnson argued that forcing an otherwise law-abiding permit holder to repeat another state’s licensing process burdens the Second Amendment.
After a federal district court dismissed the challenge, the Eighth Circuit affirmed that decision May 26.
The appeals court acknowledged that carrying a firearm publicly falls within conduct protected by the Second Amendment but drew a distinction between the right to carry and Minnesota’s decision to grant reciprocity to permits issued elsewhere.
The court reasoned that Johnson had not challenged Minnesota’s underlying “shall-issue” permitting system as unconstitutional. Because Minnesota could require a nonresident to obtain one of its permits, the court said the state’s decision to waive that requirement for residents of certain other states amounted to an exemption rather than an additional restriction on the Second Amendment right.
“Because every nonresident would otherwise have to obtain a Minnesota permit, the reciprocity statute actually removes a regulatory hurdle for certain nonresidents by allowing them to use their out-of-state permits,” the Eighth Circuit concluded.
Johnson asked the Supreme Court to reverse that reasoning in an Aug. 24 petition for review.
“In the Eighth Circuit’s view, an individual’s Second Amendment rights are confined to the borders of the state of where he holds a firearm permit,” the petition said. “No matter how many times an ordinary law-abiding citizen proves his worth through a state’s firearm licensing process, another state can force him to do it again before he can exercise his ‘constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense.’”
The case raised a question that has become increasingly important as state firearm laws diverge.
Some states broadly recognize concealed-carry licenses issued elsewhere. Others recognize permits only from selected states, while some require visiting gun owners to obtain a separate state permit.
The Supreme Court’s refusal to take Johnson’s case means Minnesota’s system remains in place and the Eighth Circuit decision continues to govern within its jurisdiction.
The ruling does not mean the Supreme Court has decided that the Second Amendment never requires interstate recognition of firearm permits.
The Eighth Circuit itself noted that a different constitutional question could arise if a state simultaneously refused to issue permits to nonresidents and refused to recognize all out-of-state permits, effectively preventing nonresidents from legally carrying at all.
That was not Minnesota’s system because nonresidents can apply for Minnesota permits.
The Supreme Court’s denial comes as the justices face an unusually large group of other Second Amendment disputes involving magazine limits, firearm-purchase waiting periods and lawsuits against gun manufacturers.
Among the most closely watched is Duncan v. Bonta, a challenge to California’s prohibition on magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds.
The case has remained before the justices through an unusually long series of conferences. It has reportedly been considered across 24 conferences, following repeated redistributions and supplemental filings.
The legal landscape surrounding the California case changed significantly in July when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit struck down New Jersey’s similar magazine restriction.
Sitting as a full court, the Third Circuit concluded that magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds qualify as “arms” protected by the Second Amendment and that New Jersey failed to demonstrate a sufficient historical tradition supporting its prohibition.
The July 17 Third Circuit ruling directly conflicts with the Ninth Circuit’s decision upholding California’s restriction.
That disagreement creates what is known as a circuit split — conflicting interpretations of federal law among appellate courts — one of the factors that can make Supreme Court review more likely.
The Duncan challengers have already alerted the justices to the New Jersey ruling and argued that the split provides an additional reason for the court to intervene.
Separate disagreements have emerged over mandatory waiting periods for firearm purchases.
In Beckwith v. Frey, gun-rights advocates are challenging Maine’s three-day waiting period. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld Maine’s law, and the challengers petitioned the Supreme Court in August.
The case comes after the Tenth Circuit reached the opposite conclusion about another waiting-period law.
In August 2025, the Tenth Circuit ruled that New Mexico’s seven-day waiting period likely violated the Second Amendment and ordered that it be preliminarily blocked.
The Tenth Circuit decision rejected a lower-court ruling by Senior U.S. District Judge James O. Browning.
The appeals court concluded that delaying an otherwise lawful firearm acquisition burdens conduct protected by the Second Amendment and that the state had failed, at the preliminary-injunction stage, to identify a sufficiently grounded historical exception.
“Cooling-off periods infringe on the Second Amendment by preventing the lawful acquisition of firearms,” the court wrote.
The disagreement between the First and Tenth circuits gives the Supreme Court another potential opportunity to clarify how its modern Second Amendment framework applies to firearm-purchase waiting periods.
Another pending case, Daniel Defense v. Lowy, arises from litigation against firearm manufacturers rather than a direct challenge to a gun restriction.
The case stems from lawsuits following the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and raises questions about constitutional standing — specifically, how closely a defendant’s alleged conduct must be connected to an injury caused directly by someone else.
Daniel Defense argues that federal appellate courts are evenly divided over the proper test.
“The Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits all hold that when a third party not before the court directly caused the plaintiff’s injuries, Article III requires the plaintiff to show that the defendant’s challenged conduct had a determinative or coercive effect on that third party,” the company’s petition said. “The Fourth Circuit expressly rejected that standard here, joining the Second Circuit in holding that traceability is satisfied in such cases so long as a plaintiff plausibly alleges that the defendants’ conduct had some kind of ‘predictable effect’ on the individual who actually injured them. And since the decision below came down, the Ninth Circuit has cast its lot with the latter group.”
“There is thus now a 3-3 split on the appropriate standard for determining whether traceability is satisfied in cases where someone other than the defendant bears direct responsibility for the plaintiff’s injuries,” the petition continued.
The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to hear that case.
The court’s next scheduled private conference is Friday, Oct. 9, when the justices will consider another group of petitions seeking review.
For gun-rights advocates, Monday’s denial in the Minnesota case leaves one significant interstate-carry question unanswered: whether states can continue requiring already licensed visitors to obtain additional permits simply because their home-state licenses are not recognized.
For Minnesota, the immediate legal answer remains the one delivered by the Eighth Circuit.
The state can continue requiring Johnson and similarly situated visitors from Georgia, Florida and other nonrecognized states to obtain a Minnesota permit before carrying publicly, even if they have already satisfied licensing requirements elsewhere.
The Supreme Court chose not to decide whether that system should ultimately be reconsidered under the Second Amendment.
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