New Jersey Asks SCOTUS to Hold Its AR-15 Ban Case

Last updated October 2026 · By Nick Hall, reads the relief a cert petition asks for before he reads the questions presented

Quick take: New Jersey has asked the Supreme Court to step into the fight over its AR-15 ban and 10-round magazine limit, after losing 10 to 5 at the en banc Third Circuit in July. The petition does not ask for a full hearing. It asks the justices to hold the case until they decide the two AR-15 cases they have already agreed to hear, and both bans stay enforceable in the meantime.

• What happened: New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport filed a cert petition on October 1, 2026, and the Supreme Court docketed it on October 5 as No. 26-452.
• Why it matters: The state lost below on both the semi-automatic rifle ban and the 10-round magazine limit, and the Third Circuit’s stay of that ruling now runs for as long as this petition is pending.
• What’s next: The gun owners’ response is due November 4, 2026, and the two lead AR-15 cases are set for argument on December 2, 2026.
• Who to watch: The justices, because New Jersey is asking them to wait for Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins before touching this case.

Most cert petitions are a sales pitch. Take my case, it is the perfect vehicle, the circuits are split and the country is waiting. This one runs ten pages and asks the Supreme Court to do nothing at all until it has decided two other cases.

Table of Contents

What New Jersey Filed in Davenport v. ANJRPC

The case is Davenport v. Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, and the Supreme Court docket lists it as No. 26-452. The petition was filed on October 1, 2026 and placed on the docket on October 5.

The petitioner is Jennifer Davenport, in her official capacity as Attorney General of New Jersey, joined by the State Police superintendent, three local police officials and the Ocean County and Gloucester County prosecutors. Counsel of record is Sundeep Iyer, the state’s Solicitor General.

On the other side are the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, the Firearms Policy Coalition and five individual plaintiffs. They brought the lawsuits. They are respondents now because they won.

The petition presents two questions, and they are short. First: “Whether the Second and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit restrictions on semi-automatic assault rifles.” Second, the same question for “large capacity magazines.”

Read the direction carefully. A state files a petition like this when it lost, and New Jersey lost on both questions.

Who Won at the Third Circuit, and on What

This fight started in a federal trial court that split the difference. On July 30, 2024, the District of New Jersey upheld the magazine limit and struck the rifle ban only as to the Colt AR-15, then stayed its own order while both sides appealed.

A three-judge panel heard argument on July 1, 2025, but never ruled. The full court pulled the case for en banc rehearing on its own motion, heard it on October 15, 2025, and decided it on July 17, 2026.

The petition itself describes the result as a “10-5 vote” finding both restrictions unconstitutional. Judge Arianna Freeman wrote the opinion of the court, and Judge Shwartz wrote what the state calls the principal dissent.

The majority agreed with the trial judge that the Colt AR-15 ban violates the Second Amendment, then went further and modified the order so that the assault firearm provisions are unconstitutional for the full class of semi-automatic rifles, and it reversed outright on the magazine limit, which the lower court had upheld. The court put it this way: “We therefore hold that New Jersey’s complete prohibition on the possession of semi-automatic rifles runs afoul of the Second Amendment’s protections.”

It is not a clean sweep of the whole statute. The court sent the case back for the trial judge to resolve the challenge to the other models and types of firearms the law covers, and that list includes pistols and shotguns.

The common-use numbers did the lifting: around 24 million AR-15s and similar rifles in circulation, and over 100 million 30-round AR-15 magazines. We went through the ruling in the Third Circuit decision and the stay that followed.

What the New Jersey AR-15 Ban Actually Says

New Jersey’s law dates to 1990 and never uses the words AR-15 ban. It bans what it calls “assault firearms” and defines them in section 2C:39-1(w) of the New Jersey statutes with a list of more than thirty named models and types, including the “Colt AR-15 and CAR-15 series” and anything “substantially identical” to a listed gun.

Knowing possession of an unlicensed one is a crime under section 2C:39-5(f), punishable by up to ten years in prison and a $150,000 fine, according to the Third Circuit’s opinion. There is a license on paper. The opinion records that the challengers say, and the state does not dispute, that nobody has ever received one.

The magazine rule is simpler. The 1990 law capped magazines at 15 rounds, and a 2018 amendment lowered the cap to 10. Owners got 180 days to transfer, permanently modify, disable or surrender anything larger.

The Hold Request Is the Whole Petition

Here is the part that makes this filing unusual. New Jersey is not asking the justices to take its case and hear it.

“Petitioners therefore request that this Court hold this Petition pending its decision in Viramontes and Grant,” the state writes. After that decision it wants the Court, “if appropriate,” to grant the petition, vacate the Third Circuit’s judgment and send the case back for another look.

Those are the two cases the Court agreed to hear on June 30, 2026, Viramontes v. Cook County out of the Seventh Circuit and Grant v. Higgins out of the Second. The Viramontes docket shows argument set for Wednesday, December 2, 2026. We covered the cert grant and its question presented when it landed.

And the state has company in the waiting room. Its petition says the Court is already holding other petitions on the same subject, naming NAGR v. Lamont, Duncan v. Bonta and Gator’s Custom Guns v. Washington.

Why not simply let the petition be denied? Because, the state argues, a denial before the lead cases are decided would bring a “flood of currently restricted weapons entering” New Jersey, a line it borrows from a Second Circuit opinion.

The magazine question is the loose thread. The question the Court took is about rifles, and New Jersey’s answer is that the coming decision “will likely clarify the approach courts must take in considering restrictions on LCMs.” Likely. That word is carrying a lot of weight.

Here’s the kicker. One of the judges in the majority said much the same thing back in July. Judge Montgomery-Reeves joined the opinion and still wrote separately: “I see little reason to decide this case now and get out in front of the Supreme Court.”

What Is Enforceable in New Jersey Right Now

Everything. Nothing about New Jersey law changed on October 1 or on October 5, because a cert petition is a request and not a ruling.

The reason is an order the Third Circuit entered on August 4, 2026, granting the state’s motion to stay the mandate. The order says issuance of the mandate “is stayed pending the Supreme Court’s disposition of movants’ anticipated petition for writ of certiorari” and, if cert is granted, until a final decision on the merits.

New Jersey’s own petition puts the effect in one sentence: “As a result, the LCM and Assault Weapons provisions remain in effect.”

So do not buy a magazine over ten rounds, and do not build a rifle into a configuration the statute bans, on the strength of a ruling whose mandate has not issued. A stayed opinion is not a defense. Our New Jersey gun laws guide covers what the statute requires today.

What Happens Next

The docket gives the gun owners until November 4, 2026 to respond. That date is soft. Respondents can waive a response or ask for more time, and the Viramontes docket shows that kind of extension, from September 29 to October 29, 2025.

After a response or a waiver, the petition goes to the justices for a conference. The docket shows no conference date yet, and I am not going to guess at one.

If the Court holds the petition, as New Jersey asks, the stay stays on while Viramontes and Grant are argued and decided. If the Court denies it instead, the August 4 stay ends by its own terms and the Third Circuit’s mandate can issue.

For New Jersey owners, December 2 matters more than November 4. Judge Montgomery-Reeves wrote of the two lead cases that once they are decided, “they will carry the day.”

Ten pages. Two questions. One request, which is to wait. New Jersey lost in July and has not had to live with it for a single day.

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• New Jersey gun laws explained
• The Third Circuit’s New Jersey ruling and the stay
• The Supreme Court takes the AR-15 question
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• Where AR-15s are legal, state by state
• US gun laws by state