Ruling lets city regulate guns
State high court in rare deadlock. Denver's suit claimed that a 2003 state law wrongly pre-empted many of the city's firearm ordinances.
By Howard Pankratz
Denver Post Staff Writer
DenverPost.com
The city of Denver can regulate assault weapons, "Saturday night specials" and the open carrying of guns because of a 3-3 deadlock Monday in the Colorado Supreme Court.
The rare split decision came following a lawsuit filed by the city of Denver against the state of Colorado and Gov. Bill Owens. The city claimed that sweeping gun legislation passed by the state legislature in 2003 unconstitutionally pre-empted many of Denver's own firearms ordinances.
Two Denver district-court judges - Joseph Meyer and Lawrence Manzanares - had ruled that although the state legislation did and could override some of Denver's minor ordinances, the city still had the right to ban certain guns. These include assault weapons such as Colt AR-15s, MAC 10s, Uzis, all models of Avtomat Kalashnikovs (AKs) and some handguns.
The split Supreme Court decision means that Denver can enforce its own firearm laws governing these weapons, which the city has not done during the litigation.
Assistant City Attorney David Broadwell said Denver has been waiting for the resolution of its legal challenge to the state before moving ahead with enforcement.
Over the next two weeks, Broadwell said, the city attorney's office will confer with the mayor, the City Council and the public-safety manager to decide whether to enforce the laws.
"We'll take a breath and look at the lay of the land," Broadwell said.
The state's effort to pre-empt Denver's gun laws was unusual, Broadwell added. "Only in very recent time has the legislature attempted to wipe out municipal regulation in this area," Broadwell said.
After suing to prevent the state from pre-empting its laws, Denver was sued by a city resident, John Sternberg, seeking to enforce the state laws. The state, meanwhile, appealed the district-court ruling to the Supreme Court.
Anne Gill, the lawyer who represents Sternberg, said she was disappointed by the Supreme Court's split decision.
"We were attempting to uphold state laws that said state law would pre-empt local regulation so there would be uniform gun laws throughout Colorado," Gill said. "Our position is that gun laws are a matter of statewide interest and that there is a huge benefit to having uniformity on gun laws throughout the state."
Gill and Sternberg have already discussed options, including taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and proposing new legislation to the General Assembly.
Gill and Kristen Hubbell, spokeswoman for the Colorado attorney general's office, were pleased that a part of the state law, which established a statewide concealed-gun permit system, is still in place.
The unusual 3-3 ruling came about because new Supreme Court Justice Allison Eid had argued the case as Colorado's solicitor general and therefore was disqualified from voting on the issue.
Justices Mary Mullarkey, Gregory Hobbs and Alex Martinez voted to uphold Meyer and Manzanares while Justices Michael Bender, Nancy Rice and Ben Coats said the decisions should be reversed.
Lawyers said the split means that Colorado still does not have a critically needed appellate decision on whether the state laws passed in 2003 trump gun ordinances in home-rule cities such as Denver.
"We were prepared to have the court come down one way or the other and then we would implement whatever their final ruling would be. The goal was legal clarity," Broadwell said. "Ultimate legal clarity is only provided by the appellate courts and we didn't get it because of the deadlock."
Both Broadwell and Gill, in fact, believe the issue will be litigated again in the future - most likely if Denver decides to enforce one of the contested ordinances.
