Fingers crossed, though given the months-long limbo for “assault weapon” and “large capacity” magazine ban cases that the Court has subjected us to, it’s very much an open question about what the justices will do with the latest Second Amendment cert petition to land on their doorstep.

In a somewhat unusual step, both the plaintiffs and defendants in a 2A case are asking the Court to step in and make a final determination. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was the first party to ask SCOTUS to grant cert to Worth v. Jacobson after an Eighth Circuit panel unanimously agreed that the state’s law prohibiting adults under the age of 21 from lawfully carrying a firearm violated their Second Amendment rights, but now the Firearms Policy Coalition, MN Gun Owners Caucus, and Second Amendment Foundation are also asking SCOTUS to hear the case. 

In their reply to Ellison’s petition, the plaintiffs note that appellate courts across the country are at odds with each other over when, exactly, our right to keep and bear arms kicks in, and only SCOTUS can answer that question with any degree of finality. 

The decision below is on the heavy side of that lopsided split: a total of three Circuits, including the Eighth, have fully protected the Second Amendment rights of this age cohort, while only one goes the other way. And the decision below is also on the correct side: text and history clearly dictate that 18-to-20-year-olds enjoy full Second Amendment rights. But Petitioner is right that the question is a fundamentally important one, and split between the circuits over that issue is intolerable. Respondents therefore join Petitioner’s request that the Court grant review and set the case for argument. But the Court should do so to affirm the court below, not to reverse it.

I’m not sure if having both sides of a lawsuit in favor of Supreme Court review makes it more likely that the justices will grant cert, but the fact that there’s also a circuit court split (however lopsided) should weigh in favor of at least four justices deciding to take up Worth. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has concluded that barring under-21s from their right to keep and bear arms is perfectly compatible with the Second Amendment, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals is currently considering the question en banc in a case brought by the NRA against Florida’s under-21 ban on purchasing firearms at retail. A three judge panel on the Eleventh Circuit upheld Florida’s law, but the en banc panel has yet to weigh in despite hearing oral arguments in the case last October. 

Honestly, this should be a fairly simple issue for SCOTUS to dispose of. As the vast majority of appellate courts have recognized, the right to keep and bear arms is a right of “we the people”, which the Supreme Court has suggested is synonymous with members of the political community. Regardless of how 18-year-olds were viewed in the eye of the law in 1791, in 2025 they are fully vested with the rights and privileges of adulthood… and that should extend to their right to keep and bear arms alongside their First Amendment right to speak freely or their Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. 

The Court is slated to take up the Worth case at their April 17th conference, so it’s conceivable that we could learn if cert has been granted on Monday, April 21st. Given the extended delays in both Snope and Ocean State Tactical, I’m not holding my breath that the justices will have anything to say about Worth after just one conference. In fact, at this point I’m not holding my breath that they’ll have said anything the gun and magazine ban cases by then either, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll get good news on that front next Monday.