Today’s
State v. Ibrahim (Wash. Ct. App.) holds that the old law violated the Equal Protection Clause by unconstitutionally discriminating against noncitizens. And in the process the court says that the law did this “by denying [legal aliens’] Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”
This independent focus on the Second Amendment is important because the Supreme Court has read the Equal Protection Clause as barring most (but not all)
state discrimination against noncitizens; the federal government remains generally free to discriminate against noncitizens. But if the Washington Court of Appeals is right that legal aliens are protected by the Second Amendment, that means that even the federal government may not ban them from owning guns.
