California can expect a barrage of legal challenges to its many strict gun control regulations as a result of Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that state and local governments are bound to adhere to the constitutional right to bear arms.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court found that a Chicago-area ban on handguns can be challenged on Second Amendment grounds, meaning that the law will not stand if it is found to trample on the right to self-defense inherent in the federal constitution.

The high court has never before said that state and local gun regulations must meet a Second Amendment threshold, and the new ruling implicates laws ranging from California’s long-standing and controversial assault weapons ban to local efforts to limit the sale and possession of certain types of handguns.

The Monday decision returns the Chicago law to the lower courts, where many experts believe it will be struck down because it is a highly restrictive form of gun law. But where the line will be drawn regarding less restrictive laws is not clear; the court stressed that the Second Amendment by itself does not bar reasonable gun regulations, whether to stem urban violence or protect children around schools and other vulnerable areas.

Perhaps the first major local test involves a case out of Alameda County, where a legal challenge to an ordinance banning gun sales on county property has been on hold in a federal appeals court while the Supreme Court was mulling the Second Amendment issue.

For the most part, legal experts predict that the majority of California’s gun laws will survive. But California is one of the few states that does not have the equivalent of the Second Amendment in its state constitution, so lawyers challenging those laws will have new arguments to make as a result of Monday’s ruling. Legal experts predict years of litigation before the courts sort out which laws hold up against that strong constitutional right.

“I still think that in a majority of these cases, (the challenges) are going to lose,” said Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a Santa Clara University law professor. “But (local governments) are going to spend a significant amount of state and local money defending these lawsuits.”

Political lines prevail

The court divided along liberal-conservative lines, with Justice Samuel Alito writing the majority ruling, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and John Paul Stevens dissented.

San Jose attorney Don Kilmer, who represents gun rights advocates in the Alameda County case, said he is “optimistic” the Supreme Court’s ruling will strengthen the argument that the Second Amendment protects the right to hold a gun show at the county fairgrounds.

But Sayre Weaver, a lawyer for Alameda County, maintains the Supreme Court’s decision will not affect the legal status quo. A three-judge 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel already found that the Second Amendment should apply to the law but upheld it nevertheless. The ruling was put on hold by an 11-judge panel when the issue reached the Supreme Court.

“There’s nothing the court said (Monday) that would change that conclusion,” Weaver said of the 9th Circuit’s earlier ruling upholding the law.

Meanwhile, leading California gun rights lawyer Chuck Michel said the Supreme Court clearly left it up to the lower courts to figure out where to draw the line on gun regulation.

“This will get the courts to make specific determinations about some specific laws,” he said.

There are a host of gun control laws targeted in California, some of them already tied up in the courts awaiting the outcome in the Supreme Court. In addition to the Alameda County case, there is a challenge to San Francisco’s ordinance requiring handguns to be stored in a locked container or have a triggerlock and challenges in Sacramento to California’s process of issuing permits for concealed weapons, which critics say is arbitrary.

The Supreme Court’s Monday ruling extends a line of argument that dates to 2008, when the court ruled that the Second Amendment applies to federal gun regulations as it struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun ban. The 2008 ruling left the state and local issue unresolved because the District of Columbia is a federal enclave.

That set up the showdown over the Chicago handgun ban, considered the strictest brand of gun regulation because it places limits on the right to bear arms in the home. In Monday’s decision, the majority emphasized that the right to bear arms is particularly important in the home and that Chicago’s law is the type that is most intrusive. Chicago’s strict ban is unusual; there are no current bans on handguns in the home in Northern California cities.

Evaluations begin

Now the question is where courts will draw the line in evaluating other, less intrusive gun laws that states maintain are crucial to protecting public safety. Gun rights advocates plan to press those cases, including continuing efforts to overturn California’s assault weapons ban. A state appeals court rejected a Second Amendment challenge to that law last year, but the issue is expected to be revived.

Legal experts generally believe such state restrictions will hold up, even citing language from the Supreme Court that the ruling “does not imperil every law regulating firearms.”

In his dissent, Stevens warned that the court had left state and local efforts to reduce gun violence vulnerable, saying the “consequences could prove far more destructive — quite literally — to our nation’s communities and to our constitutional structure.”

Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor following the case closely, predicted that one of the byproducts of the ruling would be challenges in state courts by defendants facing various gun-related charges who argue the right to bear arms. And given the split in the Supreme Court, Berman said the courts are likely to be equally divided when they address those legal challenges.

“There is going to be so much of this litigation,” Berman said.

Contact Howard Mintz at 408-286-0236.