JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Missouri in federal court, seeking to overturn the state’s Second Amendment law that prohibits local police from helping enforce certain federal gun restrictions.
It is the first direct legal action by the Biden administration against the state for the Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA) that was passed last year. In a separate case pending before the Missouri Supreme Court, the federal government joined a suit brought by local governments, including Jackson County, urging that SAPA be halted.
In Wednesday’s suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, the Justice Department argues SAPA is unconstitutional and “severely impairs federal criminal law enforcement operations” to fight gun crime in Missouri.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, in a statement, said the lawsuit was an attempt by the Biden administration to get around a potentially unfavorable ruling in the state supreme court.
“After their disastrous arguments in the Missouri Supreme Court last week, the Biden Department of Justice has now filed yet another partisan lawsuit that seeks to attack Missourians’ Second Amendment rights,” said Schmitt, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. “Make no mistake, the law is on our side in this case.”
He also accused the federal government of using the lawsuit as “pretext” to suspend participation in a partnership in which Missouri prosecutors helped charge violent crimes in federal court. Schmitt did not elaborate on those circumstances, and spokespersons for the federal prosecutors’ offices in Kansas City and St. Louis could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday evening.
Critical information
SAPA, which Gov. Mike Parson signed last June, declares “invalid” many federal gun regulations that don’t have an equivalent in Missouri law. These include statutes covering weapons registration and tracking, and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.
State and local police are prohibited under the act from helping federal agents enforce any of the “invalid” laws, or from hiring former federal agents who had enforced them. Police departments are subject to $50,000 lawsuits from private citizens who believe their Second Amendment rights were violated.
Passage of the law was driven last year by gun rights activists’ and Republican lawmakers’ desire to subvert stricter gun control measures from the Biden administration. It received almost immediate pushback from the federal government and concerned both federal and local law enforcement.
SAPA’s proponents and Schmitt, who has been defending the law in court, maintain that they are protecting Missourians’ Second Amendment rights from federal overreach.
In its suit, the Justice Department argues “all of the federal firearm laws that (SAPA) purports to nullify ... are lawful and consistent with the Second Amendment.”
U.S. attorneys claim the state law violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which states federal law supercedes state law.
Since its passage, Missouri police have halted a variety of routine practices that involve either firearms or the federal government.
They include withdrawing from joint efforts to enforce gun or drug laws, cutting off the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from shell casing information gathered at crime scenes and, in some cases, barring officers from even talking to federal agents without permission.
In a briefing in the state court case last December, the Justice Department said the Missouri State Highway Patrol even released a federal fugitive rather than turn the suspect over to federal agents for fear of violating the Second Amendment law.
The lawsuit cited some of those examples in arguing the law “has endangered public safety — and the United States’ efforts to promote public safety.”
“Critical information that state and local offices previously shared with federal law enforcement officers to facilitate public safety and law enforcement is now frequently unavailable to federal law enforcement agencies in the same manner as prior to” the SAPA’s enactment, attorneys for the Justice Department wrote.
The law has also caused confusion for police over which federal laws they are still allowed to help enforce. The Missouri Police Chiefs Association has asked lawmakers to amend the act, and Parson has said he’s open to changes. But leaders in the Republican-dominated legislature have signaled they’re uninterested.
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