“Mootness” Strikes Again

Someone else made the classic mistake.

“Moot. Imagine a lawsuit for car accident damages where the defendant argues the case is moot because the crash is over. “

This was probably preventable.

Federal Court Throws Out Gun Rights Ruling on Handgun Sales to People Under 21

panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond unanimously ruled the case moot because the plaintiff in the case, a woman from Virginia named Natalia Marshall, turned 21 before the court’s decision became official, and is now able to purchase a handgun legally from licensed firearms dealers.

If you are filing one of these Second Amendment cases you need to remember a key point. Talk to your attorney to get it just right.

Yes, you file to get the unconstitutional law tossed. But do not leave it at that.

File for damages for the time spent while your rights were actively denied. You were damaged by the deprivation of rights. Demand compensation for that.

The car crash/2A rights deprivation may be over, but it still happened. At the very least force the court into mental gymnastics to pretend it didn’t.

That makes it tougher to dismiss cases for mootness.

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

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