The request was denied in a one-line order and some were alarmed by the fact there was not a single dissenting vote or statement from the justices. Paloma Capanna, the lead attorney for the New York gun retailers, stated “we are disappointed that not one of the nine justices saw fit to grant the plaintiffs some stay of enforcement of the new laws against them.”
However, the question before the Court was not the merits, but the process. It should not have come as much of a surprise a week after the justices rejected a prior motion to block the Concealed Carry Improvement Act.
In that earlier order, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined with a statement that the court’s denial was not “expressing any view on the merits of the case.” The Court yielded to the procedures of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit while noting that the law “presents novel and serious questions under both the First and the Second Amendments.”
In light of that earlier positions, it would have been strange for the Court to do anything other than summarily reject this second motion.
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