Once again last month, a public housing authority — this one in Cortland, New York — learned from a federal court that prohibiting privately-owned firearms in a facility for low-income citizens is not allowed under the Second Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Glenn T. Suddaby with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York signed the order granting a permanent injunction against the Cortland Housing Authority prohibiting any sort of firearms ban against CHA tenants. This was a case brought by the Second Amendment Foundation and three private citizens, Robert Hunter, Elmer Irwin and Doug Merrin.
This was not the first time a housing authority was bad-newsed by a court. Almost 30 years ago, the NRA sued over a public housing gun ban in Portland, Maine. The state Supreme Judicial Court ruled 6-0 against the housing authority, but in that case, the Second Amendment wasn’t used. Instead, the court decided the Portland Housing Authority (PHA) was not authorized to adopt such a ban.
In 2012, SAF took the Warren County, Ill., housing authority to court for penalizing resident Ronald G. Winbigler, who lived at Costello Terrace. This guy was a disabled, retired police officer, and he definitely had a legitimate reason to have a gun. The case was known as Winbigler v. Warren Co. Housing Authority and it should have served as a warning flag to other PHAs not to include ban language in their lease agreements.
Seven years later, SAF was back in court again, this time in East St. Louis, Ill., challenging a gun ban in the East St. Louis Housing Authority (ESLHA) facility. Once again, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction.
Two years ago, SAF supported a case in which it was not a plaintiff. A guy named Kinsley Braden sued the PHA in Columbia, Tenn. This time around, the case was decided in a state court of appeals, and the verdict was essentially the same: Public Housing residence does not require that the people living there give up their fundamental right to keep and bear arms.
Each of these cases is important because they have established legal precedents which, in an ideal world, will alert other housing authority managers to knock this off. Public housing units are, unfortunately, often crime scenes. Where better to have a firearm for personal protection than such a place?
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