The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting in New York, issued a published opinion on Tuesday, November 10, 2026, partially reinstating a lawsuit that challenges how New York City limits licensed handguns. The case is Mills v. New York City, No. 24-3308-cv. Circuit Judge Reena Raggi wrote the opinion for a panel that also included Circuit Judges Debra Ann Livingston and Michael Park. The ruling is a procedural revival, not a final victory for either side: three of the challenged rules go back to the trial court for a full constitutional hearing, and every one of the rules stays in force in the meantime.

Source: Mills v. New York City, No. 24-3308-cv (2d Cir. Nov. 10, 2026), published opinion

The plaintiffs — Charles Mills, Craig Sotomayor and Braden Holliday — sued in 2023, arguing that a stack of city administrative rules amounts to what their filings called an “absolute bar — even if temporary — to their right to have and bear arms”: a limit on carrying a backup concealed handgun, a waiting period between purchases, and limits on how many handguns a licence can hold. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District of New York dismissed the whole case, in a judgment dated December 5, 2024, concluding that “none of the predominantly administrative regulations here operates to permanently deprive applicants of their right to own and carry firearms.” The Second Circuit has now held that reasoning was the wrong test.

Source: Courthouse News Service reporting on the Second Circuit ruling, Nov. 11, 2026

The three rules sent back for trial-level review

First, 38 R.C.N.Y. § 5-22(a)(7): a licensee may carry only one handgun on the person at a time, even if licensed for more. Second, N.Y.C. Admin. Code § 10-302.1(a)–(b): a person may not acquire more than one handgun in any 90-day period. Third, 38 R.C.N.Y. § 5-25(d)(4): the former cap of two handguns registered on a single carry licence — a rule the New York City Police Department itself repealed by emergency rule in August 2024, while the appeal was pending. On the 90-day rule, the panel wrote that the regulation “serves categorically to limit the acquisition and, therefore, the possess and carry, of multiple firearms,” and that at the first Bruen step “what matters is that the challenged 90-day rules seek in every case to delay licensed individuals' acquisition of handguns.” A delay for everyone, the court held, is still conduct the Second Amendment's text covers — it cannot be waved away as merely administrative.

Not everything was revived. The panel affirmed the dismissal of the challenge to the city's handgun application and renewal fee of $340 and its $88.50 fingerprinting fee, treating the Second Circuit's earlier decision in Kwong v. Bloomberg as still controlling after Bruen. It also affirmed dismissals, for lack of standing, of challenges to the city's purchase-authorization rules, its handgun-registration rule, and dealer-reporting requirements tied to the 90-day limit. Bloomberg Law's report of the decision the same day described the outcome the same way: the concealed-carry limits were “partially reinstated” for further proceedings, not invalidated.

Source: Bloomberg Law — Challenge to NYC's Concealed-Carry Gun Limits Revived on Appeal, Nov. 10, 2026

The Bruen framework the case now returns to

The governing test comes from the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, itself a New York case, which struck down the state's old “proper cause” requirement for carry licences and replaced the old balancing tests with a two-step, history-based method. At step one, a court asks whether the regulated activity falls within the “normal and ordinary meaning” of the Second Amendment's text. If it does, the burden shifts at step two: the government must show the rule is “consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation” — in practice, by pointing to comparable laws from the Founding era and the 19th century. Judge Raggi's opinion is explicit about where this case now sits: “Each of the activities at issue warrants an affirmative answer to that question. This is not to conclude that the challenged rules are necessarily unconstitutional. We hold simply that the constitutionality of these rules must be determined at the second step of the Bruen analysis.” The panel added: “We do not here predict whether or how the government might carry that burden.”

The city's defence, as presented in the case, is practical: limits on how fast and how many handguns a person can accumulate are aimed at deterring straw purchases — legal buyers acquiring guns for people who cannot pass a check — and at slowing the diversion of licensed guns into illegal markets. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Amy Bellantoni, argued at the November 2025 oral argument that the city's administrative constraints go far beyond what safety requires, noting that the background check on a buyer itself takes, in her words, about 5 to 15 minutes to run. Amicus support lined up on both sides in the appeal, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation and Everytown for Gun Safety, according to the court docket.

Why it matters beyond the courtroom

New York City runs one of the strictest handgun-licensing regimes in the United States, and its rules govern hundreds of thousands of residents across the five boroughs — including large immigrant communities in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, among them Punjabi and South Asian families in neighbourhoods such as Richmond Hill and Jackson Heights, where licensed shopkeepers and drivers have followed the post-Bruen licensing changes closely since 2022. Because the Second Circuit covers New York, Connecticut and Vermont, its reading of Bruen step one — that a universal delay on acquisition is covered conduct, not a trivial administrative step — will shape gun cases across the region, and its reasoning is available to courts nationally confronting similar waiting-period and accumulation limits in other states.

What happens next

The case returns to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the court that dismissed it in December 2024, for step-two proceedings on the three revived claims. There the city will have to file historical evidence — Founding-era and 19th-century regulations it says are analogous to a one-gun carry limit, a 90-day purchase gap and a licence cap — and the plaintiffs will answer it. That process runs on the district court's schedule over the coming months, not days; either side can appeal again afterwards. Until a court rules at step two, nothing changes for licence holders: applications, renewals, the $340 and $88.50 fees, the one-handgun carry rule and the 90-day purchase limit all continue exactly as before.