On September 11, 2026, the Supreme Court closed Genalo v. Black, No. 25-886, with a joint stipulation of dismissal under Supreme Court Rule 46.1 — a one-paragraph docket entry, not an opinion. Two weeks earlier, New York Governor Kathy Hochul had pardoned the 2015 second-degree assault conviction that had made the respondent subject to mandatory federal detention pending removal. Erase the predicate conviction and the government’s justification for detention went with it, along with the Court’s occasion to decide the question it had agreed to hear. One governor, one pardon, one Supreme Court case gone before argument. My concern here is narrower and, for gun owners, far more consequential: can a single state official do the same thing to a pending Second Amendment case? The answer, as the Justices have already demonstrated in the AR-15 litigation, is no — and they built it that way on purpose.
Two Circuits, Not One State
The Court granted certiorari on June 30, 2026, not in one AR-15 case but in two: Viramontes v. Cook County, No. 25-238, out of the Seventh Circuit, challenging Cook County, Illinois’s assault-weapons ordinance, and Grant v. Higgins, No. 25-566, out of the Second Circuit, challenging Connecticut’s statewide semiautomatic-rifle ban. Consolidating two circuits and two governments is not a scheduling convenience. It is insurance against exactly what just happened in Genalo. A single jurisdiction can amend or repeal a law to strip a challenger of a live controversy, as New York City and New York State did in 2020, discussed below. But Cook County and Connecticut cannot coordinate a repeal cleanly enough to moot both cases at once, and mooting only one leaves the other on the docket to decide the common-use question regardless. Oral argument is set for Wednesday, December 2, 2026.
A Damages Claim Cannot Be Repealed Away
The complaint in Viramontes goes further, and this is the detail I consider decisive. The plaintiffs did not simply ask Cook County to stop enforcing its ordinance; they pleaded damages for the Second Amendment injury already inflicted. That matters because of Uzuegbunam v. Preczewski, 592 U.S. 279 (2021), which held that even a nominal-damages claim keeps a case alive, because a favorable judgment would redress a completed injury no matter what the government does to the underlying law going forward. Cook County could repeal its ordinance this afternoon and Viramontes would still not be moot, because the plaintiffs are owed a judgment on the injury already suffered. I want to be precise about scope: I can confirm that damages theory for Viramontes. I have not independently confirmed that Grant’s complaint pleads the identical claim, and I will not assert more than the record supports.
The Court Already Learned This Lesson
The Justices did not invent this caution in a vacuum. They earned it the hard way in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. City of New York, 590 U.S. 336 (2020). The Court had granted certiorari on January 22, 2019, to decide whether a New York City ordinance barring licensed handgun owners from transporting their firearms to a second home or shooting range outside the city violated the Second Amendment. The city had defended that ordinance successfully through the district court and the Second Circuit. Then, as Justice Alito wrote in dissent — joined in full by Justice Gorsuch, and by Justice Thomas as to all but Part IV-B:
“In the District Court and the Court of Appeals, the City vigorously and successfully defended the constitutionality of its ordinance… One might have thought that the City, having convinced the lower courts that its law was consistent with Heller, would have been willing to defend its victory in this Court. But once we granted certiorari, both the City and the State of New York sprang into action to prevent us from deciding this case. Although the City had previously insisted that its ordinance served important public safety purposes, our grant of review apparently led to an epiphany of sorts, and the City quickly changed its ordinance. And for good measure the State enacted a law making the old New York City ordinance illegal.”
Justice Alito opened bluntly: “By incorrectly dismissing this case as moot, the Court permits our docket to be manipulated in a way that should not be countenanced.” He traced the stakes to first principles: “Twelve years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), we held that the Second Amendment protects the right of ordinary Americans to keep and bear arms. Two years later, our decision in McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), established that this right is fully applicable to the States.” The per curiam majority dismissed the case as moot anyway — and even flagged, without deciding, that the plaintiffs might still add a damages claim on remand, since they had not sought damages in their original complaint. That is precisely the gap Viramontes’ plaintiffs did not leave open six years later.
What the Structure Tells Us
None of this guarantees a particular result on the merits in December. But it shows how seriously the Court now treats the risk that a losing government defendant will manipulate the docket rather than litigate to a decision. A single pardon can still end an immigration case, because Article III gives the Court no power to decide a controversy once it disappears. The AR-15 cases were built, deliberately, so that no comparable maneuver by Cook County, Connecticut, or any other jurisdiction can do the same to the Second Amendment. When the Justices hear argument on December 2, they will be deciding the merits — not managing an exit.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.