The Colorado Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the University of Colorado has no authority to bar students or visitors from lawfully carrying guns on campus.

The appeals court said an El Paso County district judge was wrong to dismiss a challenge filed by a group called Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and three students from the University of Colorado.

The CU Board of Regents adopted a ban on all guns on campuses, believing the statewide Concealed Carry Act (CCA) did not apply to universities.

But the court found that the legislature, in standardizing the rules governing concealed weapons from county to county through the CCA of 2003, specifically intended the act to apply everywhere in the state except in a handful of places listed in the statute, like K-12 schools.

Attorney Jim Manley, who represents the plaintiffs, called the ruling “a real victory for individual freedom” and the law.

“When the legislature says statewide, it means statewide,” said Manley, an attorney for the Mountain States Legal Foundation. “The regents wanted to read in an exception that didn’t exist. The court of appeals rejected that.”

Rule challenged in 2008

The University of Colorado originally banned guns on campuses in 1970. The policy allows students to keep guns in lockers with campus police. Generally speaking, a handful of students store hunting rifles in those lockers and are allowed to transport them across campus.

The CCA requires those who carry concealed firearms to pass a background check and be at least 21 years old.

After the CCA passed, the regents asked then-Attorney General Ken Salazar if the CCA applied to CU. Salazar ruled it did not.

That opinion stood unchallenged until December 2008, when the lawsuit was filed in the wake of the fatal Virginia Tech University shootings, after universities rushed to ban guns on campuses, and, at the same time, some students moved to overturn bans.

After Thursday’s ruling, the lawsuit may go back to district court, or CU can appeal the decision to the Colorado Supreme Court. The university could also repeal the ban if it so chooses.

Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the University of Colorado system, said school officials are weighing options. Regents will likely discuss the matter at a regularly scheduled board meeting next week.

“For us, the issue has always been about more than ‘guns are good or guns are bad,’ ” McConnellogue said. “For us, it’s been the issue of autonomy for the Board of Regents to govern the CU campuses as the Colorado Constitution stipulates. In that regard, it’s disappointing.”

A national anti-gun group urged the CU system to appeal the ruling.

“We are disappointed by this ruling that could result in students and transient visitors carrying loaded semi-automatic weapons at the University of Colorado,” Paul Helmke, president of the Washington, D.C.- based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a written statement.

CSU ban faces lawsuit

The ruling also could impact a gun ban passed in February by Colorado State University officials, over the objections of gun-rights groups.

The local chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus and Rocky Mountain Gun Owners filed suit in Larimer District Court on Thursday against CSU over its ban, hoping for the same result the court of appeals delivered.

Supporters of the bans, at CU and CSU, have argued that they contribute to preventing mass shootings like the one at Virginia Tech. CSU students who oppose the ban, however, believe it leaves them defenseless in the event a criminal gets on campus with a gun.

“This is definitely a step in the right direction,” said Tim Campbell, head of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus at CSU, of the appellate ruling. “This just makes our case stronger.”

CSU attorneys are reviewing the appeals court decision, said CSU spokeswoman Michele McKinney.

Weapons policies on the CSU campuses have not yet been implemented.

Martha Altman, one of the three student-plaintiffs, has graduated from UC Denver.

She said the public has a misunderstanding in thinking that every student is packing a gun in universities that don’t have bans.

Altman applauded Thursday’s ruling.

“Our interpretation is that the regents had overstepped their bounds,” Altman said. “They should follow the law of the state of Colorado, and the appeals court made that clear.”

This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, this story said that the University of Colorado first reapproved the gun ban in 2004. The original 1970 gun ban was strengthened and reapproved in 1994.