Cordray Will Join in Defending Second Amendment Rights in United States Supreme Court Case

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) - Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray announced today that his office would join arguments to be made in the United States Supreme Court that Second Amendment rights under the United States Constitution should be protected from undue restrictions imposed by state and local governments. The Supreme Court granted full review today and will examine this issue in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, based upon the Court's landmark ruling last year in District of Columbia v. Heller. That ruling recognized that, with respect to the federal government, the Second Amendment affords individuals the right to keep and bear arms.

"We are grateful that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this important case," said Cordray. "We will join with others in arguing that the Court should hold that the people's Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is fundamental and cannot be denied by state and local governments."

Attorney General Cordray joined an amicus brief on July 7, 2009 asking the Court to take this case and decide whether the right of the people to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment is incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment so as to apply to the states. As the amicus brief Cordray signed argued:

"Over the last century, the Court has held that virtually all of the individual rights found in the Bill of Rights apply to the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under the doctrine of selective incorporation, these rights have been applied to the States because they are considered fundamental—that is, necessary to an Anglo-American regime of ordered liberty.

The right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment is not just a fundamental liberty interest. In the Anglo-American tradition, it is among the most fundamental of rights, because it is essential to securing all our other liberties. The Founders well understood that, without the protections afforded by the Second Amendment, all of the other rights and privileges ordinarily enjoyed by Americans would be vulnerable to governmental acts of oppression."