The Volokh Conspiracy

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Guns

No Second Amendment Right to Carry Gun on Your Government Job

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


From Tyson-Phipps v. Rubio, decided yesterday by Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein (S.D.N.Y.):

[The Complaint] alleges that defendant's decision to discipline plaintiff {a Diplomatic Security Special Agent employed by the United States Department of State} "for carrying a licensed personal handgun in a private hotel room in an open carry state," was in violation of the Second Amendment, rendering this decision "not in accordance with law" and "contrary to constitutional right" under the [Administrative Procedure Act]. As we have previously explained to plaintiff, however, "just as a private employer engaged in security would obviously be justified in barring its employees from carrying their personal handguns on the job" without violating the Second Amendment, "so too may the Government here."

New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n, Inc. v. Bruen (2022) … has no application here. Defendant's decision to discipline plaintiff was merely "a restriction placed by the Government on one of its employees"—not, as in Bruen, an instance of "the Government exercising its power to regulate or license as a lawmaker."

Seems correct to me.  For more on how the normal Second Amendment rules, like the normal First and Fourth Amendment rules, generally don't apply to government employees on the job, see p. 1962 of Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms After Bruen.