On September 30, 2026, Judge Glenn T. Suddaby of the Northern District of New York issued a summary-judgment decision in Antonyuk v. James, No. 1:22-CV-0986, that cuts in two directions at once. He upheld New York’s bans on carrying firearms in public parks, in establishments licensed to serve alcohol, in theaters, and in zoos. He permanently enjoined the ban on carrying at airports. And he wrote, in terms no district judge uses lightly, that the Second Circuit precedent compelling the first result may not survive the Supreme Court.
A Judge Who Followed the Rule and Questioned Its Source
Judge Suddaby did not accuse any court of anything. He said he was bound. A district court in the Second Circuit must follow Antonyuk v. James, 120 F.4th 941 (2d Cir. 2024) (“Antonyuk II”), unless intervening Supreme Court decisions so undermine it that the Second Circuit will “almost inevitably” overrule it. He concluded the plaintiffs had not met that standard, and he applied the precedent against them.
He was nonetheless candid about where the law is heading:
“At the outset, the Court must candidly acknowledge that it is conceivable or even likely that certain rulings of the Second Circuit in Antonyuk II may be overruled by the Supreme Court based on its intervening decisions (e.g., in Rahimi, Hemani, and Wolford) not simply for the reasons proffered by Plaintiffs but for three other reasons.”
The judge said “conceivable or even likely,” not certain, and I do not overstate it. But a trial judge who writes those words is telling the Supreme Court where to look.
Three Reasons the Judge Gave
The opinion identifies three concerns. The first is cumulative: the challenged provisions, the court wrote, “do not exist in a vacuum but together with numerous other provisions banning concealed carry,” and the Concealed Carry Improvement Act “bans concealed carry in so many discrete locations that together the bans constitute a ban that exists nearly everywhere.” Bruen anticipated the problem: a State may not designate so many places sensitive that the exception swallows the right to carry in public. N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).
The second concerns justification. Under United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), the question is whether a modern law imposes a comparable burden for a comparable reason. The judge found little admissible evidence that permit holders, who must satisfy good-moral-character, interview, and training requirements, threaten anyone in the challenged locations.
The third concerns history. The State relied on laws from territories and from eras far afield of 1791 and 1868 “without properly discounting their weight.” Territorial enactments say little about the original meaning of the Second Amendment, and the founding is the date that counts.
The Airport Ruling and What It Shows
The airport ban, N.Y. Penal Law § 265.01-e(2)(n), fell. The court granted a permanent injunction effective immediately and denied a stay. The plaintiffs prevailed on that one provision and lost on four categories of locations where Second Circuit precedent controlled. This is not a sweeping victory, and it should not be described as one.
The Principle That Explains the Outcome
My own view, developed with the historical research of Dr. Angus McClellan and set out in my Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy article, is that the history supplies a workable rule. Bruen identified legislative assemblies, courthouses, and polling places as settled sensitive places. 597 U.S. at 30. What those three had in common at the founding was not simply that the public was kept out. It was that the government supplied security.
Polls were run by sheriffs. Legislative chambers were closed to everyone but members and had their own officers. Courts were protected by officers of the court, and the Judiciary Act of 1789 itself created the United States Marshals Service. Where the founding generation banned guns in these places, it protected the people inside.
The modern analogues are the secured federal building, the Supreme Court, and the airport checkpoint, with limited entry, magnetometers, and armed officers. A State that disarms a citizen at the door owes that citizen the protection the disarmament presupposes.
The places Bruen named are also ones ordinary people visit rarely and for discrete purposes. Few Americans spend their days in a legislature, a polling place, or a courtroom. Parks, restaurants, theaters, and zoos are the settings of ordinary life, and Wolford v. Lopez, 146 S. Ct. 2032 (2026), addresses the right to carry in just such everyday settings. A scheme that bans carry in nearly every such place does not regulate the right. It eliminates it.
What Comes Next
An appeal is expected, though none has been filed. The parties have told the court they anticipate further proceedings. The Second Circuit has already revisited part of this statute in Christian v. James, 176 F.4th 189 (2d Cir. 2026).
My forecast is that the Supreme Court will resolve the sensitive-places question in a major way within the next few years, after the AR-15 cases argued this December. That is a prediction, not a certainty. What the Antonyuk decision establishes is narrower and more durable: a federal trial judge, with the full record before him, concluded that the governing precedent is probably wrong and said so in writing. The Supreme Court will have that opinion in front of it when the question arrives.
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.