## Facts

- New Jersey required a permit to carry a handgun in public and conditioned issuance on showing “justifiable need.”
- For private citizens, “justifiable need” required detailed proof of an urgent necessity for self-protection, supported by specific threats or prior attacks showing a special danger not avoidable by other means.
- Thomas Rogers, a law-abiding businessman who serviced ATMs in high-crime areas, applied for a carry permit but could not satisfy the “urgent necessity” standard.
- Rogers’s permit application was denied, leaving him unable to legally carry a handgun for self-defense while conducting his business in high-risk areas.
- Rogers filed a federal constitutional challenge alleging the regime violated the Second Amendment as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
- The federal district court upheld the law, and the Third Circuit affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether New Jersey’s requirement that ordinary citizens prove “justifiable need” (specific threats or prior attacks evidencing urgent necessity) to obtain a public-carry permit violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms, as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether the Supreme Court should grant certiorari to review the constitutionality of restrictive public-carry licensing regimes upheld by lower courts.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court denied the petition for a writ of certiorari in a summary order.
- The denial left intact the Third Circuit’s decision upholding New Jersey’s “justifiable need” requirement.
- Justice Thomas dissented from the denial of certiorari, joined by Justice Kavanaugh except as to one part, and would have granted review.
- In dissent, Justice Thomas characterized the law as a near-total bar on public carry for typical law-abiding citizens and argued the Court should resolve disputes over public-carry restrictions.

## Legal Principles

- A denial of certiorari is not a decision on the merits and does not create a Supreme Court precedent on the constitutional question presented.
- Where certiorari is denied, the lower-court judgment remains effective within its jurisdiction.
- The dissent maintained that the Second Amendment protects a right to bear arms in public for self-defense and criticized lower courts for treating that right as less protected than other constitutional rights.
- The dissent argued that conditioning exercise of a fundamental right on a showing of special need imposes a severe burden warranting Supreme Court review.

## Conclusion

The Supreme Court declined to review New Jersey’s “justifiable need” public-carry permitting scheme, leaving the Third Circuit’s approval of the law in place; the only substantive analysis in the case was a dissent arguing that the regime effectively denies ordinary citizens the ability to carry firearms for self-defense and merited certiorari.


Rogers v. Grewal, 140 S. Ct. 1865 (2020)