The U.S. Supreme Court on June 30 passed on the opportunity to weigh in on the constitutionality of laws that prevent people ages 18 to 20 from buying or using firearms, declining to hear multiple appeals testing those restrictions. The justices rejected petitions that sought review of a federal ban on handgun purchases by people in that age range and a comparable Florida law requiring purchasers to be at least 21 for all firearms purchases.
Lower federal courts had previously rejected the plaintiffs’ claims in those matters that the age-based prohibitions run afoul of the Second Amendment’s guarantee to "keep and bear arms." By turning away the appeals, the Supreme Court left those lower court decisions intact.
In a separate development, the court’s decision not to hear an appeal by Democratic-governed Pennsylvania allowed a lower court ruling to remain in effect. That ruling found that Pennsylvania statutes barring 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying firearms in public during a declared state of emergency violate the Second Amendment. With the high court declining review, the lower court’s finding stands.
Challenges to gun restrictions at both state and federal levels have proliferated since the Supreme Court broadened constitutional protections for firearms in a notable 2022 decision. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the court recognized for the first time a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense and established a new analytical framework. Under that framework, a government regulation limiting firearms must be "consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation" to survive constitutional scrutiny.
Advocates for gun rights have prioritized opening access for people ages 18 to 20 in the wake of the 2022 decision, which invalidated New York’s limits on carrying concealed handguns. Courts, however, have reached divergent conclusions when applying the new historical-tradition test to age-based restrictions.
For example, the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2025 rejected a constitutional challenge to the federal restrictions even after applying the Supreme Court’s manner-and-historical-tradition test. The 4th Circuit’s opinion stated that "from English common law to America’s founding and beyond, our regulatory tradition has permitted restrictions on the sale of firearms to individuals under the age of 21." That reasoning supported upholding the federal age limit.
By contrast, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision last year that struck down the federal age prohibition on Second Amendment grounds. That ruling, however, applies only within the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction - specifically in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Other appeals courts have likewise produced mixed outcomes. The Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a challenge to Pennsylvania’s age minimum for carrying firearms during an emergency. In 2024, the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit invalidated Minnesota’s age minimum for obtaining a permit to carry a handgun in public. Meanwhile, the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2023 upheld Florida’s requirement that purchasers be at least 21 years old, a law enacted after the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
The Supreme Court’s posture on firearm laws since the 2000s has generally expanded Second Amendment protections. The court broadened gun rights in landmark decisions in 2008 and 2010, and then further extended them in the 2022 Bruen ruling. During its current term, the court issued two rulings that also expanded gun rights: on June 26 it invalidated a Hawaii law restricting the carrying of handguns on private property open to the public absent the owner’s permission, and on June 18 it narrowed the reach of a long-standing federal law that barred firearms possession by certain drug users, reducing a measure that had threatened the gun rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana and own firearms.
With the Supreme Court declining to resolve the appeals involving 18- to 20-year-olds, the legal landscape remains uneven. Some circuits have permitted age-based restrictions to stand, while others have struck them down or limited their application. That circuit split means that the ability of 18- to 20-year-olds to lawfully buy or carry firearms can differ depending on the jurisdiction and which lower-court rulings remain binding in those areas.
Context and implications
The court’s refusal to take up the appeals does not produce a nationwide rule resolving the constitutional question. Instead, the effect is to leave in place a mosaic of judicial decisions across multiple federal circuits and state courts. The pattern illustrates how the post-2022 legal regime for firearms has generated repeated litigation as courts apply the new historical-tradition test to a range of modern gun restrictions.