A leading gun-rights organization is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a New Jersey law that criminalizes publishing digital files for 3D-printed firearms, a case that puts the First Amendment squarely against state gun control.
The Second Amendment Foundation filed a petition for certiorari on August 11, bringing the case Defense Distributed v. Davenport to the nation's highest court. The petition challenges a 2018 New Jersey statute that makes it a crime to distribute computer-aided design files, or any other digital code, that can instruct a 3D printer to produce a firearm, a receiver, a magazine, or a firearm component. SAF argues the law amounts to a government ban on publishing information, a direct violation of the First Amendment's protection of speech.
The case also asks the justices to settle a bitter procedural fight between two federal appeals courts over which one has jurisdiction, a dispute SAF's senior litigation director calls a judicial "spat" that left the case bouncing between circuits with no resolution.
SAF's petition lays out a striking claim: New Jersey did not pass this statute as a general public-safety measure. It enacted the law to stop Defense Distributed, the organization founded by Cody Wilson that created files allowing people with 3D printers to manufacture firearms at home for personal use. The petition quotes statements made at the bill-signing ceremony to make that point.
As the Daily Caller News Foundation reported, the petition states:
"New Jersey enacted the statute to stop Defense Distributed in particular. At the signing ceremony, the Governor [Phil Murphy] linked the law to the Attorney General's earlier action against Defense Distributed, and the Attorney General identified Cody Wilson and his supporters, said they were 'still trying to release these codes online,' announced stronger tools 'to stop them,' and warned, 'we will come after you.'"
That attorney general was Gurbir Grewal, who held the post when New Jersey first threatened legal action against Defense Distributed. The current attorney general, Democrat Jennifer Davenport, is the named respondent in the Supreme Court case. Davenport did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When a governor and an attorney general stand at a podium, name a specific citizen and his supporters, and promise "we will come after you," the usual presumption of neutral lawmaking gets harder to maintain. SAF is betting the Supreme Court will notice.
William Sack, SAF's senior director of litigation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the core question is straightforward: if Americans can publish a book explaining how to build a firearm, complete with diagrams, instructions, and a build sheet, without legal consequence, then publishing the same information as a computer file should receive the same protection.
"You can also publish a book on how to build a gun, right? And that's not even in question, right? So you can post, you can publish a book, here's how to build a gun with diagrams and instructions and a build sheet, no one's questioning that."
Sack added that SAF's position does not change when the format shifts from paper to digital.
"Our perspective is that does not change at all if what you're publishing is computer files."
That argument puts New Jersey in an awkward position. The state's law specifically targets "digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored and displayed in electronic format as a digital model" that could program a 3D printer to produce a firearm or component. Under SAF's reading, New Jersey criminalized a particular medium of expression while leaving identical content in other formats untouched, exactly the kind of content-based restriction courts have historically viewed with suspicion.
The SAF has been aggressive in pressing Second Amendment claims at the Supreme Court level. The organization recently petitioned the justices to strike down New York City's stun gun ban, part of a broader strategy to force the high court to define the boundaries of firearms rights across multiple fronts.
Beyond the First Amendment question, the petition raises a procedural issue that SAF says demands Supreme Court intervention. The case originated in a federal district court in Texas before being transferred to New Jersey. A three-judge panel from the Third Circuit, which covers New Jersey, upheld the state's ban. But the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, overturned the lower court's ruling and directed that the case be returned.
The Third Circuit refused.
Sack described the standoff bluntly. "The Fifth Circuit and the Third Circuit kind of got into a spat," he told the Daily Caller News Foundation. "The case bounced back and forth between them, and then essentially a dispute arose between them as to who rightfully had the case." SAF's position is that the Third Circuit "snatched this thing back against the Fifth Circuit's will."
That kind of inter-circuit conflict is one of the classic reasons the Supreme Court agrees to hear a case. When two federal appeals courts issue contradictory orders about the same lawsuit, only the justices can sort it out. SAF is asking them to do exactly that, and to answer the underlying constitutional question while they are at it.
The jurisdictional tangle echoes a pattern playing out in gun-rights litigation nationwide. After the Supreme Court's landmark Wolford ruling reshaped Second Amendment jurisprudence, lower courts have struggled to apply the new framework consistently, producing conflicting outcomes that keep pushing cases back toward the high court.
New Jersey passed the statute in November 2018, during a period when several Democratic-led states moved aggressively to regulate emerging firearms technology. The law's text is sweeping: it criminalizes distributing any digital model that "may be used to program a three-dimensional printer to manufacture or produce a firearm, firearm receiver, magazine, or firearm component."
But the legislative history SAF cites in its petition suggests the law was not written to address a broad category of conduct. It was written to stop specific people. Governor Phil Murphy linked the statute to the attorney general's earlier enforcement action against Defense Distributed. Attorney General Grewal named Cody Wilson by name and warned his supporters that the state would pursue them.
That level of specificity matters in constitutional litigation. Laws that target particular speakers or viewpoints face a heavier burden of justification than laws of general application. SAF appears to be building its case on both fronts, arguing that the law fails as a content-based speech restriction and that it was enacted with the specific intent to silence a disfavored speaker.
New Jersey is hardly alone in pursuing aggressive firearms restrictions that draw immediate legal challenges. Virginia's semiautomatic firearms ban faced lawsuits from gun-rights groups and the Trump administration almost the moment it was signed.
The Supreme Court receives thousands of cert petitions each term and agrees to hear only a small fraction. But SAF's filing presents two issues the justices may find difficult to ignore: a live circuit split on jurisdiction and an unresolved question about whether computer code qualifies as protected speech under the First Amendment.
If the Court declines to hear the case, the Third Circuit's ruling upholding New Jersey's ban would stand, and the jurisdictional dispute between the two circuits would remain unresolved. That outcome would leave the law intact while doing nothing to clarify whether other states can enact similar bans on digital firearms files.
Similar state-level gun restrictions have drawn swift legal opposition across the country. Connecticut's Glock ban prompted an immediate legal challenge from gun-rights organizations, and New York's governor moved to impose new state controls after federal regulatory rollbacks, a pattern of blue-state escalation that keeps generating constitutional confrontations.
New Jersey's attorney general has not yet responded publicly to the petition. Whether Davenport's office will urge the Court to deny review or engage on the merits remains to be seen.
When a state government names a citizen at a bill-signing, promises to "come after" him, and then passes a law to do it, the least the Supreme Court can do is take a look.
