Key Takeaways
- The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed California and Giffords’ lawsuit against the Biden administration’s ghost gun rule, ruling 3-0 that the plaintiffs did not prove harm.
- The court’s decision focused on standing, meaning California and Giffords failed to show concrete injury from the rule.
- This ruling does not impact another case where a federal judge declared the ghost gun rule unconstitutional and vague.
- California frequently appears in the Ninth Circuit, often on the defense side regarding gun laws.
- A dismissal for lack of standing does not change existing federal and state gun laws; individuals should consult a lawyer before making any decisions.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A federal appeals court has thrown out a lawsuit brought by the state of California and the gun control advocacy group Giffords over the Biden administration’s ghost gun rule, with a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling 3-0 that the plaintiffs did not demonstrate the rule caused them harm.
That account comes from an August 21, 2026 wire report, as reported by Reuters, which supplies the panel, the vote, and the ground for the dismissal.
Last week I covered Gun Owners of America’s announcement that a federal judge ruled the same Biden ghost gun rule unconstitutional and void for vagueness. That was a different case in a different court, and this Ninth Circuit dismissal does not touch it.
The ground matters more than the vote count here. A ruling that plaintiffs did not show the rule harmed them is a ruling about standing. Standing is the threshold question in federal litigation: before a court will hear your argument at all, you have to show that the thing you are challenging actually injured you in some concrete way. Reuters reports the panel found California and Giffords did not make that showing. That is a decision about who gets through the courthouse door, not a decision about whether the rule is good law.
California is a fixture in the Ninth Circuit, though usually on the other side of the caption. NRA-ILA announced in July 2025 that the Ninth Circuit struck down the state’s background check requirement for ammunition purchases in an NRA-backed case. Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation filed their opening brief in the Ninth Circuit in May 2025 challenging California Penal Code Section 26806, the law requiring firearm dealers to run 24 hour video and audio recording of customers and retain it for state inspection. In October 2025, the Second Amendment Foundation announced it had filed Jaymes v. Bonta with the NRA, the Firearms Policy Coalition, a licensed retailer and two individuals, challenging AB 1127, the state law banning commercial sale of Glock and Glock platform pistols.
In those cases the state is defending its own statutes. In this one, by the Reuters account, California went to the federal courts asking for something and was turned away before anyone weighed the substance of the request. Gun owners live under the opposite version of that problem constantly, told that a law they cannot lawfully violate has not injured them enough to challenge. Standing cuts in every direction, and it just cut against a state attorney general and a national gun control organization.
More from USA Carry:
I will not tell you what this ruling changes about buying, building, or selling anything. A headline is not a holding. A dismissal on standing leaves federal and state law where it already sat, and California’s own statutes on unserialized frames and receivers are what govern people in that state regardless of how this appeal came out. Talk to a lawyer in your state before you change anything you are doing.
I will continue tracking this case and will report on the panel’s actual opinion once the text is available.
