Florida Department of Law Enforcement Loses in Court Over It Delaying Gun Purchases

Florida Carry’s recent legal victory will benefit every law-abiding Floridian seeking to purchase a firearm.

The Florida Carry, Inc., is proud to announce a major court victory against the administrative state in Florida. This victory will benefit every law-abiding Floridian who wants to purchase a gun. The case, Pretzer v. FDLE, was decided last week by the First District Court of Appeals.

Florida Carry General Counsel Eric J. Friday of Kingry & Friday, PLLC, in Jacksonville, with substantial assistance from U.S. Law Shield, brought the lawsuit against the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and director Rick Swearingen, who Mark Glass later succeeded.

“The case was filed to challenge their creation of a decision-pending response,” Friday said. “People had been waiting months to have a decision rendered by FDLE on a firearm purchase.”

When the case was originally filed, five plaintiffs had waited from one to eight months. Once FDLE was served, Friday said, the plaintiffs were all cleared within 48 hours of being named in the suit.

“They had the ability to clear them,” Friday said. “They just weren’t doing it.”

The court told FDLE they now have four options only:

1. approve
2. non-approve
3. conditional approval
4. conditional non-approval

The en banc panel strongly objected to FDLE’s requirement that potential plaintiffs waste time exhausting the department’s administrative process rather than filing suit in court.

“In the opinion that follows, we discuss the applicable law, the trial court’s interpretation of section 790.33, the provision of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) explicitly addressing exhaustion of administrative remedies, and the applicability of the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies with regard to an action pursuant to section 790.33. Finding that the relief authorized by section 790.33(3)(f)1. is the remedy in this case, rather than any remedy available under the APA, we reverse the judgment of the trial court,” the appeals court said in their decision.

“This ruling ends to ability of administrative agencies to deny firearm rights without being subject to lawsuits and attorney’s fees for their misconduct,” Friday said. “It also ends their ability to force people into the lengthy administrative process when the Legislature has not required this administrative process. This is an argument every agency has attempted to use against gun owners, and the Court has removed that argument from administrative agencies that want to violate Floridians’ gun rights.

“Ending government abuse of citizens is always a huge victory,” Friday said.

But, Friday predicts Florida Department of Law Enforcement won’t change, at least not until they’re forced to change.

“They won’t change until they’re found by a court to have violated Florida’s gun-purchasing background check law,” he said. “790.33 was intended to stop this type of abuse before a lawsuit is needed, but clearly it has not worked. The penalties need to be stiffer.”

The First DCA decision is expected to resurrect several additional lawsuits.

Respectfully,

Your Florida Carry board of directors.

---

About Florida Carry, Inc.:

Florida Carry is a Florida nonprofit, non-partisan, grassroots organization founded in 2010. Florida Carry is dedicated to advancing the fundamental civil right of all Floridians to keep and bear arms for self-defense as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Florida. In 2016, Florida Carry was named the Grassroots Organization of the Year by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Florida Carry, Inc. was organized in order to coordinate activities better, effectively lobby the state legislature, and to provide a legal entity capable of filing suit to demand compliance with state and federal law. Florida Carry stands to represent our members, millions of gun owners, and the countless knife and defensive weapon carriers of Florida. We are not beholden to any national organization’s agenda that may compromise that mission. Florida Carry is the state’s largest independent Second Amendment advocacy organization.

from https://ift.tt/GmsIzJt
via IFTTT