When the Supreme Court struck down New York’s “may issue” licensing law in the Bruen case, the justices made it clear that allowing licensing authorities the power to arbitrarily and capriciously deny someone a carry license is an infringement on their Second Amendment rights. The Court noted that a handful of states also had “suitability” tests in place, but the majority declared that the handful of states that have discretionary criteria “appear to operate like ‘shall issue’ jurisdictions.”
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Not so in Massachusetts, where a municipal court judge in Boston recently ruled that an applicant for a license to carry was wrongly denied based on “suitability” concerns. A Boston man named Jordan Lebedevitch sought an LTC (which is required to both own and carry a handgun and some long guns in Massachusetts) as part of his job working in security, but Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox and the Boston police rejected Lebedevitch’s application based on a 2023 police report in which his then-wife told officers that he had threatened to kill himself.
Lebedevitch disputed the threat of suicide in a letter to the department, writing that the situation had been a “misunderstanding.” He filed a legal petition in Municipal Court, which landed before Sinnott. The judge initially ruled in favor of the Police Department but reversed his decision the next day, ordering the department to issue the license, according to court filings.
Lebedevitch did not return a call seeking comment.
Sinnott rejected a Police Department motion to reconsider the case, finding that legal precedents the department cited to justify the license rejection are no longer valid under the Bruen ruling. In a brief, handwritten decision, he ruled that the Bruen case effectively removed Cox’s discretion in determining Lebedevitch’s suitability for the license.
“The ‘unsuitability standard’ is [the same as the] ‘may issue’ discretion rejected by Bruen,” Sinnott wrote.
Following the Bruen ruling, state authorities issued guidance to police departments in Massachusetts saying they could still enforce portions of the law that deny gun rights to convicted felons and that give police chiefs the power to reject licenses for “unsuitable” applicants who could pose a risk to public safety if armed.
But if applied statewide, Sinnott’s ruling could upend that remaining authority.
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As well it should. I have no idea if Lebedevitch threatened suicide a year ago or if the allegation was truly just a misunderstanding, but either way it’s essentially a he said/she said situation, which doesn’t justify denying Lebedevitch of a fundamental civil right. If he can pass a background check and has jumped over all the other hurdles that Massachusetts puts in front of would-be gun owners, he should get his license. Period. Full stop.
If police have the power to determine whether someone is “suitable” to possess a gun, why not let them decide if someone is “suitable” to be secure in their person or property? I’m sure there are plenty of folks in law enforcement who would love to have the ability to suspend someone’s Fourth Amendment rights because they’ve previously been subject to a police report, or even accused but not convicted of a crime.
We would never accept that standard when it comes to the Fourth Amendment, of course, anymore than we’d go along with letting the police or judges determine who can exercise their freedom of speech or their right to worship. The Second Amendment isn’t a second-class right, but Massachusetts’ suitability law treats the right to keep and bear arms as a privilege to be doled out by licensing officers.
This issue isn’t relegated only to Massachusetts. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld New York’s “good moral character” requirement for concealed carry licenses, which is essentially just a “suitability” standard going by another name. No matter what Sinnott said in his Boston courtroom, or what the Second Circuit recently declared, it’s going to be the Supreme Court that eventually decides whether to let these clauses stand. As long as the justices adhere to their own ruling in Bruen, it shouldn’t be a difficult question for them to answer.
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