SEP 30, 4:12 PM

D.C. Wrongfully Arrested 6 People For Carrying Handguns In Public, Federal Judge Rules

Jenny Gathright https://twitter.com/jennygathright

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that D.C. police officers wrongfully arrested six people for carrying handguns in public between 2012 and 2014, potentially creating a legal pathway for as many as 4,500 people arrested under similar circumstances to seek damages from the city.

The six plaintiffs were arrested for violating a combination of D.C. gun laws that have since been struck down or changed. They sued and asked for several forms of relief — including judgment in their favor, the sealing of their arrest and prosecution records, and the award of damages.

The lead plaintiff in the cases decided on Wednesday is Maggie Smith, a nurse from North Carolina who was pulled over in 2014 and subsequently arrested for carrying a pistol that was licensed in her home state. The other plaintiffs are a combination of D.C., Maryland, and Virginia residents who were arrested on gun charges in the District. All of their charges were eventually dropped — and the laws they were arrested for violating are no longer in effect. They filed the lawsuit jointly in 2015.

D.C. previously enforced a complete ban on carrying handguns in public, which a federal judge ruled unconstitutional in 2014. The city replaced that complete ban with the so-called “good reason” law, which said that residents needed to have a compelling reason to obtain a permit for a firearm — but the “good reason” law was also ruled unconstitutional by an appeals court in 2017. D.C. has also since repealed laws that prevented non-D.C. residents from possessing firearms and criminalized the possession of ammunition by people who didn’t have their guns registered in the District.

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