Kent attorney Bob Warden has voluntarily dropped his federal lawsuit against the City of Seattle’s city parks gun ban, a case that was a bit unusual because he was acting as his own client.
He issued a terse statement with the notation that it would be his only statement, in which he said in part, “Thanks in large part to the ongoing efforts of the Second Amendment Foundation, there are other cases in the pipeline around the country that are at least as well-positioned as mine to resolve this question. After careful consideration, and in support of a coordinated approach to protecting this fundamental civil right, I asked the Ninth Circuit this week to dismiss my pending appeal.”
Warden’s case was not connected to the successful lawsuit that was earlier filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association, along with two other local gun organizations and five individual citizens. The SAF-NRA case won in King County Superior Court before Judge Catherine Shaffer earlier this year. She ruled that the city’s park ban violated Washington State’s model preemption act that dates back to 1983. This column discussed that ruling here.
Warden’s case hit rougher waters in federal court before Judge Marsha Pechman in March, when she ruled that the ban was constitutional under both the state and federal constitutions. That was before the Supreme Court incorporated the Second Amendment to the states in the landmark case of McDonald v. City of Chicago, a case brought by SAF and the Illinois State Rifle Association.
As with the McDonald case, there has been confusion over the two Seattle cases, which this column detailed here. The NRA had brought a separate case against Chicago, but the high court accepted the SAF-ISRA case for review and heard oral arguments in March. At that time, the Supreme Court allowed an NRA attorney ten minutes of argument time, leaving the impression with many in the press that McDonald was NRA’s case.
A similar situation developed briefly in Seattle, with some news reports occasionally suggesting that Warden’s case and the SAF-NRA case were either connected or were one and the same. In a press release issued this morning, SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb clarified the situation, noting that “The federal case, as Warden noted in his statement, has never been connected to our case,” Gottlieb clarified. “The SAF/NRA case, which was filed first and has already won in King County Superior Court, remains very much alive and we are confident that we will prevail in the state court of appeals.
“At the end of the day,” Gottlieb added, “I anticipate that SAF and NRA, and our fellow plaintiffs, will share a significant victory, one we can all be proud of. Ultimately, of course, our case isn’t about declaring victory or taking credit, but about protecting the firearm civil rights of all Washington gun owners.”
Meanwhile, Seattle Times readers are continuing to comment on the fatal shooting earlier this week of wood carver John T. Williams, who certainly had some problems, but maybe not to the degree of getting killed over them. That shooting will most assuredly get a thorough investigation, as the public interest is very high. At this writing, there were 370 comments in the Reader Feedback column.
Likewise, public interest is high in Spokane over the fatal shooting of a church pastor in the Spokane Valley by a sheriff’s deputy several days ago. This column discussed the shootings here and here. Both columns garnered some reader feedback of their own, and unlike the Seattle Times, this column never cuts off reader opportunity to comment, so have at it.
Last and not least, Jeff Knox has weighed in with an AmmoLand column on the upcoming Gun Rights Policy Conference, scheduled later this month in San Francisco. There is a ready-made issue that will be undoubtedly discussed at the Sept. 24-26 conference dealing with a local gun shop in the city that some anti-gun activists want to see closed down. This column discussed the controversy here.
In a city that brags up its tolerance of alternative lifestyles, San Francisco may be demonstrating that “tolerance” only applies when the issue is politically correct.
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Comments
From your article:
"Warden’s case hit rougher waters in federal court before Judge Marsha Pechman in March, when she ruled that the ban was constitutional under both the state and federal constitutions."
Please help me understand something: How —in the face of the state preemption— would the city ban be legal?
Is she —the judge— inclined to say that the city has the authority to tell the state to 'kiss-off' and do as it darned well pleases?
By what feat of judicial legerdemain does she propose to say that a city may completely ignore state law which happens to be superior law?
Anonymous,
Bob Warden filed his suit based on the grounds that it violated his 2nd Amendment rights. As they were interpreted by the courts at that time the 2nd Amendment only applied to the federal government, not to the states. That all changed with the decision on the McDonald case in June.
Regarding that matter of the 'incorporation doctrine,' I find that whole idea was/is yet another case of extreme judicial perfidy. Indeed, there is not so much as the ghost of a hint in any part of the U.S. Constitution lending credence to any such thought as 'selective incorporation' of laws to the states.
I mean, think: There is nothing in any part of the Bill of Rights which implies in whatever way that those amending article applied only to the United States.
And yes, even though the First Art. of Amend. says in part that the "Congress shall make no law ...", that in no way implies that only the Congress is affected, inasmuch as it would have been a most ludicrous result to have allowed the several states to have the unlimited power to do what the United States was forbidden from engaging.
Additionally, we understand that the several states themselves had specific prohibitory language in their respective constitutions which afforded those same protections.
And finally, the federal Constitution's Article VI, paragraph (2) —the supremacy clause— effectively applies all of the amending articles to the states, by dint of their being a part of the Constitution, itself the 'supreme law of the land.'
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