From Tyson-Phipps v. Rubio, decided yesterday by Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein (S.D.N.Y.):
The complaint contends that the defendant’s decision to discipline the plaintiff—a Diplomatic Security Special Agent with the United States Department of State—for carrying a licensed personal handgun in a private hotel room within an open-carry state, violated the Second Amendment and rendered the decision not in accordance with law and contrary to constitutional right under the Administrative Procedure Act. As we have previously explained to the plaintiff, however, just as a private security firm would be plainly justified in prohibiting its employees from bringing personal handguns to work without infringing the Second Amendment, so too may the Government here.
New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen (2022) has no bearing on this case. The defendant’s decision to discipline the plaintiff was merely a restriction placed by the Government on one of its employees—not, as in Bruen, an instance of the Government exercising its power to regulate or license as a lawmaker.
That assessment seems correct to me. For additional discussion on how ordinary Second Amendment rules, like the standard First and Fourth Amendment rules, generally do not apply to government employees while on duty, see page 1962 of Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms After Bruen.
