Novotny v. Moore: Could This Be the Supreme Court’s Next “Sensitive Places” Case?

Executive Summary

Novotny v. Moore asks the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Maryland’s many location-based firearm restrictions violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. The challenged locations include public transit, state parks and forests, healthcare facilities, museums, stadiums, amusement parks, casinos, places serving alcohol for on-site consumption, government buildings, school grounds, and areas at or near public demonstrations.

The case matters nationally because the Supreme Court’s June 2026 decision in Wolford v. Lopez invalidated Hawaii’s default ban on licensed carry across private property open to the public, but it did not decide the constitutionality of most designated “sensitive places.” Novotny asks the Court to take that next step.

On the merits, the Fourth Circuit upheld every challenged Maryland location ban while separately invalidating Maryland’s private-property permission rule as applied to property open to the public. The Novotny petitioners argue that the Fourth Circuit validated a right-destroying map one category at a time and failed to confront the restrictions’ cumulative burden on ordinary daily life. Maryland responds that its laws identify discrete locations, rest on historical traditions, and are materially narrower than the blanket private-property rule struck down in Wolford.

Current enforceability is different from the appellate merits holding. Because the Fourth Circuit stayed its mandate while Supreme Court review is sought, Maryland State Police says the existing district-court injunctions remain operative against the alcohol-location rule, the private-property permission rule, and the demonstration provision. The appellate court upheld the first and third restrictions on the merits, but that judgment has not yet displaced the injunctions governing enforcement.

The procedural vehicle may be as important as the merits. Most claims were framed as facial challenges, so the Fourth Circuit asked whether the provisions had constitutional applications—not whether every possible application was lawful. That posture may make Novotny attractive because it presents a large cross-section of the doctrine, or unattractive because narrower as-applied challenges could let the Supreme Court decide less at once.

As of September 4, 2026, the Supreme Court has not granted Novotny. The petition and Maryland’s opposition are complete, the petitioners submitted their reply on September 2, and the case has been distributed for the Court’s September 28 conference. The Court could grant review, deny review, or grant the petition, vacate the Fourth Circuit judgment, and remand for reconsideration in light of Wolford—the alternative relief the petitioners expressly request.

For New Yorkers, the immediate rule is simple: nothing in the pending Novotny petition presently changes where a New York license holder may carry. New York’s surviving sensitive-location prohibitions remain enforceable unless a controlling court orders otherwise. But Novotny could become highly consequential because Maryland and New York prohibit carry in many of the same categories, and New York itself joined an appellate amicus brief supporting Maryland.

For license holders, the operational lesson is equally important: a pistol license is not a universal carry pass. Current-law checks, careful route planning, safe handling, secure storage, avoidance, de-escalation, and sound judgment remain essential while the litigation develops. Training can strengthen those habits, but it does not replace current statutes, controlling court orders, official guidance, or individualized advice from a qualified attorney.

NY Safe Inc. analysis: Wolford answered whether a state may flip the default across nearly all private businesses. Novotny asks the next question: can a state produce much the same practical burden by dividing ordinary life into a long list of individually named “sensitive places”? The Supreme Court has not yet answered that question.

What This Guide Answers

This article answers, upfront and directly:

1. What is Novotny v. Moore?
2. Which Maryland carry restrictions are being challenged?
3. What did the Fourth Circuit actually hold?
4. What does the September 2, 2026 reply brief argue?
5. How does Novotny build on Heller, Bruen, Rahimi, and Wolford?
6. How does it compare with New York’s Antonyuk, Christian, and Frey decisions?
7. What is Maryland’s strongest defense?
8. Why did New York support Maryland in the Fourth Circuit?
9. What could a grant, denial, or remand mean for the CCIA?
10. Does the case change where New Yorkers may carry today?

The Answer in One Paragraph

Novotny v. Moore is a pending Supreme Court petition challenging a final Fourth Circuit decision that upheld Maryland bans on licensed firearm carry in numerous public and publicly accessible locations. Its importance lies in the gap left by Wolford: although Wolford held that government cannot broadly reverse the carry presumption on private property open to the public, it did not decide how courts should evaluate the combined effect of multiple sensitive-place designations. Because New York’s CCIA contains close counterparts to most of Maryland’s challenged categories, a broad Supreme Court ruling in Novotny could reshape future challenges to New York law. A denial or narrow remand, however, would not invalidate any New York restriction.

Current Case Status: September 4, 2026

The Supreme Court docket is No. 25-1324, Katherine Novotny, et al. v. Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland, et al. The petition arises from four consolidated Fourth Circuit appeals: Nos. 24-1799, 24-1827, 24-1834, and 24-1836.

The petition is dated May 20, 2026, and the case was docketed May 29. Maryland filed its brief in opposition on August 17. The Supreme Court’s electronic docket says the petitioners’ reply was “submitted” September 2 and that the case was distributed for the September 28 conference. The Court may later relist the petition or otherwise change its scheduling.

That is a request for review—not a ruling. No court should be described as having invalidated New York’s sensitive-location law because Novotny is pending, and no carrier should change conduct based on speculation about what the Supreme Court might do.

Primary source: U.S. Supreme Court docket, Novotny v. Moore, No. 25-1324.

What Is Novotny v. Moore?

Maryland enacted Senate Bill 1 in 2023 after Bruen invalidated Maryland’s former “good and substantial reason” requirement by implication and Maryland changed its licensing framework through separate legislation. SB 1 restricted carry by otherwise licensed individuals in several categories of locations. Some additional Maryland restrictions at issue predated SB 1 and appeared in existing statutes or regulations.

Two groups of plaintiffs filed federal lawsuits on the day SB 1 was signed. The Novotny plaintiffs included Katherine Novotny, Sue Burke, Esther Rossberg, Maryland Shall Issue, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the Firearms Policy Coalition. The related Kipke plaintiffs included Susannah Kipke and the Maryland State Rifle and Pistol Association.

The cases were consolidated as they progressed. That procedural history explains why the pending Supreme Court filing is called Novotny v. Moore but includes petitioners and claims associated with both the Novotny and Kipke cases.

The petition’s question presented is deliberately broad: whether Maryland’s numerous prohibitions on carrying firearms in places frequented by the general public violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

This is not a criminal appeal and not an emergency application. It is a civil constitutional challenge seeking review of a final appellate merits decision.

Primary sources: petition for certiorari; Fourth Circuit merits opinion.

What Maryland Locations Are at Issue?

The litigation addressed nine principal categories:

The final row is important, but it is no longer the live issue in the pending Novotny petition. Maryland initially sought Supreme Court review of the private-property loss in Moore v. Kipke, No. 25-1206. After the Supreme Court invalidated Hawaii’s closely similar rule in Wolford, Maryland stipulated to dismissal, and the Court dismissed Maryland’s petition on August 13, 2026.

The remaining Novotny petition therefore targets the location-specific restrictions that Maryland won below.

Present Maryland enforcement status: The merits judgment and the presently operative injunctions must be reported separately. Maryland State Police states that, pending Supreme Court review, Maryland cannot enforce the restrictions covering alcohol-serving locations, private buildings or property without owner consent, and the demonstration provision. That agency guidance describes current enforcement; the Fourth Circuit opinion supplies the appellate merits holding. Read the Maryland State Police prohibited-places update.

Three scope details matter when comparing Maryland with New York. First, the demonstration provision is not an automatic 1,000-foot exclusion zone around every gathering in every circumstance. As Maryland describes it, the distance rule operates after law enforcement advises the person that a qualifying demonstration is occurring and orders the person to leave. Second, the transit restrictions litigated here concern facilities and vehicles owned or controlled by the Maryland Transit Administration; New York’s transit provision sweeps across a differently worded and broader list. Third, Maryland’s healthcare provision covers defined institutional categories, while New York reaches “any location providing health, behavioral health, or chemical dependence care or services.” Similarity is legally relevant, but the statutes are not interchangeable.

Primary sources: Fourth Circuit opinion, pp. 5–8 and 37–38; Supreme Court docket, Moore v. Kipke, No. 25-1206.

What the Fourth Circuit Held—and Why

The Fourth Circuit treated sensitive-place restrictions as regulating conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s text. That meant Maryland bore the burden at the historical stage of the analysis. On that structural point, the decision rejected the idea that calling a location “sensitive” automatically places it outside the Amendment.

The majority nevertheless upheld the location bans. Its analysis proceeded category by category and relied on several recurring theories:

• Heller and Bruen expressly recognized schools and government buildings as established examples of sensitive places.
• Historical restrictions on arms at public assemblies, fairs, markets, social gatherings, ballrooms, and places of amusement could support some modern gathering-place restrictions.
• Regulations concerning vulnerable populations could support restrictions at schools and healthcare facilities.
• Later nineteenth-century regulations could be probative when addressing modern institutions or locations that did not exist in their present form at the Founding.
• Because most of the claims were facial challenges, Maryland could defeat them by demonstrating constitutional applications of the challenged provisions.

Judge James Wynn did not sit on the panel; Judge Roger Gregory wrote the controlling opinion, joined by Chief Judge Albert Diaz. Judge G. Steven Agee agreed that bans in government buildings and school grounds were constitutional, agreed with the result concerning healthcare facilities, and agreed that the private-property default failed. He dissented from the court’s approval of the other challenged location bans.

Judge Agee’s disagreement matters because it captures many of the arguments now presented to the Supreme Court: sparse or geographically isolated historical laws cannot establish a national tradition; prohibitions on dangerous conduct are not necessarily analogues for bans on mere possession; government ownership is not a universal escape from constitutional scrutiny; and evidence about urban parks should not automatically justify bans throughout vast state forests.

This is a real merits split over method and application—not a preliminary prediction made on an undeveloped record. The published decision is Kipke v. Moore, 165 F.4th 194 (4th Cir. 2026).

The Constitutional Stack: How Novotny Builds on the Major Cases

1. District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)

Heller held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right and identified the right of self-defense as central. It also stated that laws forbidding firearms in “sensitive places such as schools and government buildings” were presumptively lawful. But Heller did not define the full category or supply a test for new locations.

2. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022)

Bruen held that New York’s proper-cause requirement violated the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising the Second Amendment right to carry publicly.

It also made two statements that sit at the center of Novotny. First, courts may reason by analogy from established sensitive places to “new and analogous” locations. Second, there is no historical basis for declaring all of Manhattan sensitive merely because it is crowded and generally protected by police. Expanding the exception to all places where people congregate would eviscerate the public-carry right.

Primary source: Supreme Court opinion in Bruen.

3. United States v. Rahimi (2024)

Rahimi clarified that the government does not need a historical twin. Courts must determine whether a modern regulation is consistent with the principles underlying the historical tradition, paying particular attention to how and why the old and new regulations burden the right. Rahimi also emphasized the difficulty of facial challenges: a law is not facially invalid simply because unconstitutional applications can be imagined.

Maryland relies on Rahimi to defend broader analogical reasoning and the Fourth Circuit’s treatment of facial claims. The Novotny petitioners rely on the same decision for the proposition that historical principles still cannot justify a burden extending beyond what the tradition supports.

Primary source: Supreme Court opinion in Rahimi.

4. Antonyuk v. James (Second Circuit, 2024)

Antonyuk reviewed preliminary injunctions involving multiple parts of New York’s CCIA. The Supreme Court first granted certiorari, vacated the Second Circuit’s 2023 judgment, and remanded after Rahimi. The Second Circuit then issued Antonyuk II, substantially reaffirming its earlier analysis.

The Second Circuit preserved an injunction against New York’s social-media disclosure requirement and against the private-property default as applied to property open to the public, but it vacated most of the district court’s broader preliminary injunction. The Supreme Court later denied a second certiorari petition on April 7, 2025. That denial was not a ruling on the merits.

The procedural distinction is critical: Antonyuk primarily addressed preliminary relief, while the Fourth Circuit decision underlying Novotny followed summary judgment and constitutes a final merits judgment.

Primary sources: first Antonyuk Supreme Court docket; second Antonyuk Supreme Court docket; Second Circuit’s Antonyuk II opinion.

5. Wolford v. Lopez (Supreme Court, June 25, 2026)

Wolford held 6–3 that Hawaii violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments by prohibiting licensed carry on private property open to the public without the owner’s express authorization. Property owners remained free to exclude firearms; the constitutional defect was the state’s firearm-specific reversal of the ordinary default across publicly accessible private property.

The holding was narrow, but the Court’s method was consequential. The majority emphasized three questions when evaluating historical analogues:

1. How many jurisdictions adopted them?
2. Were they well accepted—expressly or through open, widespread, and unchallenged practice?
3. Were they relevantly similar in both how and why they burdened the right?

The Court rejected hunting and anti-poaching rules as poor analogues for a general carry restriction in retail establishments. It also rejected reliance on an isolated 1865 Louisiana Black Code provision, both because it was not widespread or accepted and because of its deeply discriminatory purpose and context.

For a full explanation of the holding, read NY Safe Inc.’s complete Wolford v. Lopez analysis.

Primary source: Supreme Court opinion in Wolford.

6. Christian v. James and Frey v. City of New York

In May 2026, the Second Circuit’s Christian v. James decision affirmed a permanent injunction against New York’s private-property default as applied to property open to the public. It also affirmed judgment for New York against a facial challenge to the public-parks prohibition. The majority relied heavily on later nineteenth-century municipal park regulations; Judge Steven Menashi dissented from the parks ruling.

In September 2025, Frey v. City of New York affirmed the denial of preliminary relief against New York’s Times Square and public-transit restrictions, among other challenged rules. Because Frey arose at the preliminary-injunction stage, it should not be described as a final Supreme Court resolution of those constitutional questions. It is nevertheless controlling Second Circuit authority on the posture it decided.

Primary sources: Second Circuit opinion in Christian; Second Circuit opinion in Frey.

The National Landscape Is Moving—but the Split Is Not Yet Clean

The cases reveal a meaningful conflict in method: how broadly courts may describe a historical principle, how much weight they may give late nineteenth-century laws, whether conduct-based rules support location bans, and whether security or cumulative burden matters. That is not necessarily the same as a mature circuit split over identical statutes.

Three developments sharpen the context:

• On August 10, 2026, the Ninth Circuit remanded Wolford after the Supreme Court’s decision while stating that its analysis of the other challenged location restrictions was unaffected. That makes the Ninth Circuit an important comparison, but not a new Supreme Court holding on every location.
• In Schoenthal v. Raoul, the Seventh Circuit litigation addressed carry on public transit. The Supreme Court denied certiorari on April 6, 2026. A denial of certiorari does not endorse the lower court’s reasoning or decide the merits nationally.
• The Third Circuit granted rehearing en banc in the related Koons and Siegel matters and vacated its September 2025 panel opinion and judgment. As of this article’s September 4 verification date, we identified no replacement en banc merits opinion. That pending work may make the Supreme Court more willing to wait—or make clarification more urgent once another appellate court speaks.

Primary sources: Ninth Circuit remand order in Wolford; Supreme Court docket in Schoenthal; Third Circuit order granting rehearing en banc in Koons and Siegel.

What the September 2 Novotny Reply Actually Argues

The reply does more than repeat that Maryland identified too many sensitive places. It advances four interconnected arguments.

Argument 1: Wolford makes the Fourth Circuit’s approach harder to defend

The reply begins with Wolford’s recognition that the Second Amendment protects carrying arms for self-defense while Americans go about their daily lives. It argues that Maryland’s rules interfere with that ordinary life through a combination of transit, parks, forests, healthcare facilities, entertainment locations, and restaurants or other premises serving alcohol.

The petitioners’ theory is not that Wolford already decided those locations. It is that Wolford supplies a burden-sensitive and historically disciplined methodology that the Fourth Circuit did not adequately apply.

Argument 2: Courts cannot avoid the whole by examining only the pieces

Maryland describes its laws as targeted because each prohibition names a discrete location. The reply responds that the accumulation of many discrete restrictions can still produce a severe burden.

This is the petition’s most important conceptual contribution. Constitutional analysis ordinarily proceeds claim by claim, but public carry happens as a continuous daily activity. A person may use transit, enter a healthcare office, cross a park, eat in a restaurant, and attend an event during one trip. A legal map can become practically prohibitory even if no single category covers most of the state by itself.

The unresolved issue is not only whether each dot on the map can be defended. It is whether enough individually defended dots can merge into a de facto ban on ordinary public carry.

That sentence captures the petitioners’ theory, not an existing rule or the likely outcome. The Supreme Court has not adopted a standalone cumulative-burden test for sensitive places. Cumulative effect may inform whether a proposed historical analogy is too broad or whether the right remains meaningful, but Novotny asks the Court to decide how—if at all—that consideration fits within the text-and-history framework.

Bruen does not authorize a numerical or free-floating burden-balancing test. It rejects interest balancing and instead requires the government to establish a relevant historical tradition, with Rahimi focusing the comparison on how and why the old and new rules burden the right. Cumulative effect is relevant here only as part of the petitioners’ argument about the breadth and fit of Maryland’s claimed analogies.

Argument 3: Maryland’s historical analogues are too sparse, late, or dissimilar

The reply invokes Wolford’s treatment of historical analogues. It attacks reliance on a small number of local or territorial enactments, laws adopted late in the nineteenth century, and rules addressing dangerous behavior rather than peaceful possession.

The historical inquiry cannot responsibly be reduced to “1791 only.” Depending on the constitutional question and the theory offered, courts examine evidence around the Founding and Reconstruction and may consult later evidence cautiously. The useful questions are whether an enactment is temporally close, geographically widespread, representative rather than anomalous, and relevantly similar in both how and why it burdened the right. A rule aimed at threatening conduct, intoxication, or a particular person is not automatically an analogue for forbidding every licensed carrier from entering a category of place.

For alcohol-serving locations, for example, the distinction is between historical rules aimed at intoxicated persons or particular social gatherings and a modern categorical ban applying even to a licensed carrier who consumes no alcohol. For demonstrations, the distinction is between laws punishing affrays, intimidation, riots, or carrying to the terror of the public and a location rule triggered by the gathering itself.

Maryland disputes those characterizations and argues that historical regulations reveal broader principles concerning public assemblies and locations where firearms pose distinctive risks.

Argument 4: Real security is the thread connecting historically sensitive places

The petitioners propose that historically recognized sensitive places were protected against armed attack by government-provided security. On their account, the government may disarm visitors in a genuinely secured courthouse or legislative chamber because it has assumed responsibility for protection and controlled armed access.

Maryland calls that theory ahistorical and unworkable. Its opposition argues that neither Heller nor Bruen makes armed security a constitutional prerequisite and that sensitivity should not change hour by hour with staffing, budgets, entrances, or screening procedures.

The reply answers that the absence of any statutory security condition is precisely the problem: Maryland calls entire categories sensitive whether or not the government controls entry or supplies protection.

The Supreme Court has not yet adopted the petitioners’ security theory. Three positions are therefore in play: petitioners treat substituted government protection as a necessary limiting principle; Maryland treats security as constitutionally irrelevant; and an intermediate view treats controlled access and substituted protection as important evidence without making them absolute prerequisites.

The soundest formulation for this article is narrower than the petitioners’ rule: security may not be a formal constitutional prerequisite, but controlled access and substituted protection are highly relevant to how a location restriction burdens the right of self-defense. That is analysis, not a holding.

Primary sources: petitioners’ September 2 reply; Maryland’s brief in opposition.

Historical-Analogue Audit: What the Competing Sources Actually Need to Prove

The chart below is a source-audit tool, not an independent validation of every historical enactment cited by the parties or judges. Before final publication, every historical law used for a direct quotation should be checked against the original text, date, jurisdiction, scope, and later treatment. Its purpose is to prevent a common analytical error: treating every old firearms rule as proof of every modern place prohibition.

How to use the matrix

For each challenged category, ask five separate questions: Is the source authentic and accurately quoted? Was it widespread and accepted? Is it close enough in time to illuminate the relevant public understanding? Did it regulate the same kind of person, conduct, or place? And does the modern law impose a comparable burden for a comparable reason? A table cannot decide those questions, but it makes unsupported leaps visible.

The Public-Safety Case, Fairly Stated

Supporters of Maryland’s restrictions do not defend them only as historical analogues. Their modern policy case is that certain environments present distinct management risks: confined transit vehicles, emotionally charged demonstrations, facilities serving vulnerable patients, and crowded venues where alcohol, limited exits, or rapid movement can complicate an emergency response. Bright-line location rules, supporters argue, can make expectations easier for visitors, employees, property managers, and law enforcement to understand and can reduce opportunities for escalation, negligent access, or confusion during a crisis.

Maryland also emphasizes that the challenged provisions name defined categories rather than prohibiting licensed carry everywhere people gather. On that account, the laws leave substantial public carry intact while drawing boundaries around places the State considers unusually vulnerable, congested, or difficult to secure.

Those are serious policy arguments, and a credible constitutional analysis should state them plainly. But they must not be mistaken for judicial findings that licensed carriers cause violence in the challenged locations. Nor, under Bruen, can a modern public-safety rationale by itself substitute for the historical tradition the government must establish. The legal question is whether Maryland’s asserted risks are addressed by sufficiently representative historical regulations that imposed a comparable burden for a comparable reason.

Primary source: Maryland’s brief in opposition, especially pages 1–2 and 19–31.

Maryland’s Strongest Argument

A serious analysis must distinguish Maryland’s surviving location rules from the private-property default struck down in Wolford.

Hawaii’s rule presumptively prohibited licensed carry throughout an enormous universe of private businesses open to the public. Maryland’s surviving provisions identify particular categories. Maryland therefore argues that Wolford already did its work: it disposed of Maryland’s materially similar private-property rule, while leaving the traditional sensitive-place analysis untouched.

Maryland also argues:

• Heller and Bruen expressly allow sensitive places beyond a closed historical list.
• Rahimi rejects a demand for identical founding-era statutes.
• Courts have reached substantial agreement on the underlying principles even when they disagree about individual locations.
• The petitioners’ security requirement appears nowhere in the Supreme Court’s cases.
• Facial challenges are the wrong vehicle for invalidating provisions that may have plainly constitutional applications.
• Further development in other circuits would help the Supreme Court rather than justify immediate intervention.

This is a credible vehicle argument as well as a merits argument. The Court might agree that the doctrine needs clarification but prefer a case presenting narrower as-applied claims, a sharper circuit split, or additional appellate decisions.

Why the Supreme Court Might Pass Even If the Issue Matters

The importance of a constitutional question does not guarantee certiorari. Novotny gives the Court a panoramic view of sensitive-place doctrine, but that breadth creates genuine vehicle objections:

• The petition’s question is broad and spans multiple statutes, regulations, locations, and historical records.
• Most claims are facial challenges. A location may have some constitutional applications even if a narrower application would fail, and standing limitations prevented some applications from being tested.
• The judgment mixes unanimous categories, divided categories, and different reasoning among the judges.
• The disagreement among appellate courts is partly methodological rather than a clean, mature split over identical statutory language.
• The Third Circuit’s en banc proceedings in Koons and Siegel may provide another appellate treatment of overlapping questions.
• A narrower as-applied case—focused on one plaintiff, one location, and one concrete burden—could be a cleaner vehicle.

Those objections deserve direct treatment because they also shape New York strategy. A denial would say nothing about the merits. A grant could focus on one category, the facial-challenge standard, historical methodology, security, cumulative burden, or the effect of Wolford. Readers should not assume the Court must either validate or dismantle every challenged restriction at once.

The Ordinary-Day Test: Why the Combined Map Matters

Consider a hypothetical licensed carrier who takes a bus, crosses a public park, attends a medical appointment, eats at a restaurant licensed for on-premises alcohol service without drinking, and visits a museum. This is an analytical illustration, not a statement that every fact pattern is covered or advice to carry in any listed place.

The Fourth Circuit reviewed the Maryland categories individually and upheld them. New York’s provisions remain governed by New York statutes, injunctions, and Second Circuit precedent. The table does not establish that either state has created a de facto carry ban. It demonstrates the factual premise behind the petitioners’ unresolved argument: the constitutional burden experienced over a day may be larger than any single row suggests.

Why Novotny Matters to New York

The Maryland and New York statutes are not identical, but their overlap is substantial:

New York’s participation also matters. The Fourth Circuit opinion lists New York among the states that filed as amici supporting Maryland. That does not bind New York to every litigation argument, but it confirms that New York officials recognized a shared interest in defending the broader sensitive-place framework. The official Fourth Circuit opinion identifies the amici and resolves the consolidated appeals.

For the full current carry map, consult NY Safe Inc.’s New York Sensitive Locations Law 2026 status report.

How Novotny Could—and Could Not—Change New York Law

If the Supreme Court denies review

A denial would leave the Fourth Circuit judgment intact. It would not approve Maryland’s reasoning, create Supreme Court precedent, or decide the New York provisions. New York’s existing Second Circuit law would remain unchanged.

If the Court grants, vacates, and remands after Wolford

A GVR would direct the Fourth Circuit to reconsider its judgment in light of Wolford. It would not itself declare the Maryland or New York categories unconstitutional. Its practical significance would depend on the instructions and the Fourth Circuit’s analysis on remand.

Such an order could nevertheless matter persuasively in New York by signaling that Wolford has consequences beyond private property. Lawyers challenging the CCIA would still need suitable plaintiffs, standing, the correct procedural vehicle, and arguments that address binding Second Circuit precedent.

If the Court grants and decides the merits narrowly

The Court might decide only one category, reject or accept the proposed security principle, clarify the permissible use of late nineteenth-century evidence, or resolve a facial-challenge issue. A narrow decision could alter some future New York litigation without dismantling the CCIA’s entire location framework.

If the Court adopts a broader cumulative-burden principle

This would be the most consequential outcome for New York. Courts might have to consider not merely whether each category has an analogue, but whether the full network of restrictions preserves a meaningful path for public carry in daily life.

That would not necessarily make every provision fall. Schools, courthouses, polling places, and genuinely secured facilities could remain constitutionally distinct. The harder questions would involve transit, parks, healthcare facilities, entertainment venues, restaurants, and broad event or protest rules—places that form the ordinary infrastructure of modern public life.

What Novotny cannot do by itself

The filing of a petition cannot suspend a New York statute. A grant of review would not automatically suspend it either. Even a merits decision could require further proceedings to determine which New York applications are controlled, who receives relief, and how an injunction is framed.

For New York permit holders, the safe operational rule remains: follow the law currently in force and the injunctions currently governing it, not predictions about future litigation.

The Five Questions Journalists and Courts Should Watch

1. Is the sensitive-place inquiry category-by-category or map-wide?

The Fourth Circuit used a location-by-location analysis. The petitioners say that approach can conceal the total burden. The Court’s willingness—or refusal—to discuss cumulative effect may matter more than the result for any single location.

2. How much historical evidence is enough?

Wolford emphasized the number of jurisdictions and the acceptance of historical analogues. Novotny may reveal whether a handful of municipal or late nineteenth-century rules can establish a national tradition for parks, entertainment, transit, or restaurants.

3. Can conduct regulations justify location bans?

Many historical laws addressed intoxication, affrays, terrorizing conduct, riots, or misuse. Modern sensitive-place laws often criminalize peaceful possession by a licensed person. Whether those regulate the same problem in a sufficiently similar way is central.

4. Is security constitutionally relevant, required, or neither?

The petitioners present security as the limiting principle. Maryland calls it invented and unstable. Even if the Court rejects a categorical security requirement, it could treat controlled access and government-provided protection as relevant to how heavily a restriction burdens self-defense.

5. How should facial challenges work in Second Amendment cases?

If one secure hospital wing or one controlled government facility is constitutional, does that defeat a facial challenge to a statute covering every facility in the category? Or can a law lack a plainly legitimate sweep when its text does not distinguish secured from unsecured applications? The answer can determine outcomes before the historical merits are fully reached.

NY Safe Inc.’s Bottom Line

Novotny is important because it puts a clean, final merits record behind the question Wolford left open. It asks whether a constitutional right that exists in theory remains meaningful when the state removes it from transit, parks, healthcare, restaurants, entertainment, public events, and other parts of ordinary life.

But responsible analysis must keep three propositions separate:

1. What the petitioners argue: Maryland’s combined restrictions eviscerate public carry and rest on insufficient historical evidence.
2. What Maryland argues: the laws regulate discrete, historically analogous sensitive locations and the proposed security test has no basis in Supreme Court precedent.
3. What the law is today: the Fourth Circuit upheld Maryland’s challenged location bans, the Supreme Court has not yet granted review, and New York’s surviving CCIA sensitive-location rules remain enforceable.

The durable lesson is not that every sensitive-place law must fail. It is that “sensitive” cannot become a label that relieves government of proving history, fit, and constitutional limits.

Readers interested in the broader historical question can continue with NY Safe Inc.’s strict 1791 analysis of New York’s sensitive places. For the active Times Square challenge, see the NY Safe Inc. guide to Goldberger v. James.

Why Training Still Matters While the Law Changes

Litigation can change the boundaries of the law, but it does not reduce the responsibility carried by a license holder. A permit confirms that a licensing authority has authorized possession or carry within the permit’s terms; it does not convert every destination into a lawful carry location, resolve every property rule, or protect a person from the consequences of a poor judgment call.

New York’s official minimum curriculum reflects that broader responsibility. It requires 16 hours of classroom instruction and two hours of live-fire training, including safe handling and storage, state and federal law, sensitive and restricted locations, situational awareness, conflict management, de-escalation, the effects of alcohol and drugs, interactions with law enforcement, suicide prevention, and the law governing deadly physical force and New York’s duty to retreat. These subjects matter because many preventable problems begin before a firearm is touched: an unchecked destination, an avoidable confrontation, an insecure storage choice, or a failure to disengage.

Good training should build a conservative decision process: verify the current rule, identify the location and property restrictions, plan lawful storage or an alternate route, avoid confrontation, and know when the only responsible choice is not to carry. It should also be candid about its limits. A course is not individualized legal advice, does not guarantee that a licensing authority will issue a permit, does not authorize carry in a prohibited place, and does not create immunity from criminal or civil consequences.

Official curriculum source: New York State Police and DCJS minimum standards for concealed-carry firearm safety training.

Practical Guidance for New York License Holders

• Do not treat Novotny as permission to carry in a location currently prohibited by New York law.
• Review the current statutory categories before carrying. New York Penal Law § 265.01-e makes knowing or reasonably knowing possession in a sensitive location a class E felony, subject to statutory exceptions.
• Distinguish the invalidated private-property default from the still-operative sensitive-location statute. They are different provisions.
• Respect private-property owners’ communicated restrictions. Wolford did not eliminate an owner’s right to exclude firearms.
• Recheck legal status after any Supreme Court order, because headlines often omit whether an order is a certiorari grant, a denial, a GVR, or a merits decision.
• For advice about a particular location or personal circumstances, consult a qualified New York firearms attorney.

Current statutory sources: New York Penal Law § 265.01-e; New York Penal Law § 265.01-d.

Frequently Asked Questions About Novotny v. Moore

What is Novotny v. Moore about?

It is a constitutional challenge to Maryland laws and regulations prohibiting licensed firearm carry in numerous public or publicly accessible locations. The pending Supreme Court petition asks whether those restrictions violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

Has the Supreme Court agreed to hear Novotny?

No. As of September 4, 2026, the petition is pending and has been distributed for the September 28 conference. Distribution does not mean the Court will grant review.

What did the Fourth Circuit decide?

The Fourth Circuit upheld Maryland’s challenged bans covering government buildings, public transit, school grounds, public demonstrations, parks and forests, healthcare facilities, museums and entertainment locations, and premises selling alcohol for on-site consumption. It invalidated Maryland’s separate express-permission rule for private property open to the public.

Is Novotny the same case as Kipke v. Moore?

Not exactly. They began as separate lawsuits with different plaintiffs, but the appeals were consolidated and resolved in one Fourth Circuit opinion. The Supreme Court petition includes petitioners connected to both cases and uses the caption Novotny v. Moore.

What happened to Maryland’s private-property rule?

The district court and Fourth Circuit enjoined the rule as applied to private property open to the public. Maryland sought Supreme Court review, but dismissed its petition after Wolford held Hawaii’s closely similar rule unconstitutional. The injunction against Maryland’s rule remains in place for the covered application.

What did Wolford decide?

Wolford v. Lopez held that Hawaii could not prohibit licensed carry on private property open to the public unless the owner affirmatively authorized it. The ruling preserved each property owner’s right to exclude firearms. It did not decide the validity of all sensitive-location categories.

Why does Novotny matter after Wolford?

Because it asks whether Wolford’s protection of carrying during ordinary daily life and its disciplined treatment of historical analogues should affect enumerated bans involving transit, parks, healthcare, restaurants, entertainment, and other locations.

What is the cumulative-burden argument?

It is the contention that many individually named restrictions can combine to make licensed public carry impractical, even if each restriction is analyzed separately. The Supreme Court has not yet adopted a distinct cumulative-burden test for sensitive places.

Are sensitive-place laws automatically unconstitutional after Bruen?

No. Heller and Bruen recognize schools and government buildings as established examples and permit reasoning by analogy to new locations. The dispute is over the historical limits of that analogy and whether modern restrictions impose comparable burdens for comparable reasons.

Can Maryland currently enforce its alcohol-location and demonstration restrictions?

Maryland State Police says no while Supreme Court review remains pending. The Fourth Circuit upheld those provisions on the merits, but it stayed its mandate; as a result, the earlier district-court injunctions covering alcohol-serving locations and the demonstration provision remain operative. That temporary enforcement posture can change when the Supreme Court proceedings end or another court order issues.

Does Novotny change New York concealed-carry law today?

No. A pending petition does not alter New York law. The CCIA’s surviving sensitive-location prohibitions remain operative subject to existing injunctions and exceptions.

Which New York locations overlap with the Maryland case?

The closest overlaps include government buildings, schools, public transit, parks, healthcare facilities, museums and entertainment venues, alcohol-serving premises, protests or assemblies, and the former private-property permission default.

Could a Supreme Court ruling automatically erase New York’s CCIA?

That is unlikely. The effect would depend on the question accepted, the breadth of the opinion, the similarity of New York’s provisions, existing Second Circuit precedent, standing, and the scope of any later relief. A ruling could be highly consequential without invalidating the entire statute at once.

What is a GVR?

It is an order granting certiorari, vacating the lower-court judgment, and remanding for reconsideration, often in light of a new Supreme Court decision. The Novotny petitioners request a GVR in light of Wolford as an alternative to full review and reversal.

What happens if certiorari is denied?

The Fourth Circuit judgment remains in place. A denial does not mean the Supreme Court agrees with that judgment and does not create a national merits precedent.

Can private businesses still prohibit firearms?

Yes. The invalidation of government-imposed opt-in rules does not eliminate the property owner’s authority to prohibit firearms and communicate that restriction.

Why does training matter when sensitive-location law keeps changing?

Because lawful carry requires more than knowing how to operate a firearm. New York’s required curriculum includes safe handling and storage, sensitive and restricted locations, situational awareness, conflict management, de-escalation, law-enforcement encounters, alcohol and drugs, suicide prevention, and the rules governing deadly physical force. Quality training can build the habit of checking current law and making conservative decisions, but it cannot provide real-time individualized legal advice or authorize carry where the law or a property owner prohibits it.

Where should readers check for updates?

Use the official Supreme Court docket for procedural developments and primary court opinions for holdings. Do not rely on a headline that fails to distinguish a filing, injunction, appellate opinion, certiorari order, GVR, or final merits ruling.

Primary-Source Library

Novotny and the Maryland litigation

• Supreme Court docket: Novotny v. Moore, No. 25-1324
• Petition for a writ of certiorari
• Maryland brief in opposition
• Petitioners’ September 2 reply
• Fourth Circuit merits opinion
• Dismissed Maryland petition: Moore v. Kipke, No. 25-1206

Related national proceedings

• Ninth Circuit’s August 10, 2026 Wolford remand order
• Supreme Court docket: Schoenthal v. Raoul, No. 25-541
• Third Circuit order granting rehearing en banc and vacating the panel judgment in Koons and Siegel

Controlling Supreme Court decisions

• New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022)
• United States v. Rahimi (2024)
• Wolford v. Lopez (2026)

New York authorities

• New York Penal Law § 265.01-e: sensitive locations
• New York Penal Law § 265.01-d: restricted locations
• Antonyuk v. James / Antonyuk II (2d Cir. 2024)
• Christian v. James (2d Cir. 2026)
• Frey v. City of New York (2d Cir. 2025)

Editorial Note and Legal Disclaimer

This article distinguishes holdings from arguments and procedural orders. Descriptions of what the petitioners, Maryland, a majority, or a dissent contends should not be read as independent findings of fact.

NY Safe Inc. is a firearms training organization, not a law firm, and Peter Ticali is not an attorney. This article and any linked training material are general educational legal and policy commentary, not legal advice and not a substitute for advice from a qualified lawyer who knows the specific facts. Firearms law changes quickly, and the application of statutes, injunctions, licenses, exceptions, local rules, and property restrictions depends on facts and jurisdiction.

Completing a training course or holding a pistol license does not authorize carry in every location, guarantee license issuance, or create immunity from criminal or civil consequences. Verify current law and controlling orders before acting, follow property restrictions, and consult a qualified New York firearms attorney before making a carry decision in a disputed or fact-specific situation.

Verification and corrections policy

The legal status in this article was last checked against the linked primary sources on September 4, 2026. NY Safe Inc. updates the visible review date only after rechecking the docket and affected law. Material corrections identify what changed and when; silent edits are limited to spelling, grammar, formatting, and broken-link repairs that do not alter meaning.

Know the law. Build the judgment to apply it.

This article is not an argument that everyone should carry. Start with NY Safe Inc.’s current New York sensitive-locations report so the law in force—not a prediction about Novotny—guides the decision.

Still deciding whether licensed carry is right for you? Review the “Should I Carry a Gun in New York?” webinar overview. The page currently lists the live webinar at $20 with a $25 credit toward NY Safe training; scheduled availability may vary.

If you are applying for a New York carry license or need the state-required training, review what the New York 16+2 concealed-carry class covers, then choose an upcoming date below.

The course emphasizes safe handling, legal responsibilities, avoidance, de-escalation, and disciplined judgment. It does not provide individualized legal advice or guarantee a licensing result.

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