Court Opinion

ID: 9780770
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 02:51:14.156358+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:13.296808
License: Public Domain

BEASLEY, Judge,
dissenting.
After review of the record and the applicable law, I believe that the North Carolina Felony Firearms Act, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-415.1 (2009), constitutionally applies to Plaintiff, and I would therefore affirm the trial court’s order granting summary judgment to the State on that issue. Accordingly, I would review Plaintiff’s other claims on their merits, and would affirm the trial court’s order with regard to those claims as well. Thus, I respectfully dissent.
I.
I first address Plaintiff’s contention that the North Carolina Felony Firearms Act (the Act) is unconstitutional as applied to him, as that is the sole issue decided by the majority.
Our Supreme Court has recognized that
[t]he right to bear arms, which is protected and safeguarded by the Federal and State constitutions, is subject to the authority of the General Assembly, in the exercise of the police power, to regulate, but the regulation must be reasonable and not prohibitive, and must bear a fair relation to the preservation of the public peace and safety.
State v. Dawson, 272 N.C. 535, 547, 159 S.E.2d 1, 10 (1968)(citation omitted).
Because Plaintiff brings an as applied challenge to the Act, the question before this Court is whether the Act is a reasonable regulation when applied to him. In support of his argument that the Act is *31unreasonable when applied to him, Plaintiff, and subsequently the majority of this court, rely heavily on our Supreme Court’s opinion in Britt v. State (Britt II), 363 N.C. 546, 681 S.E.2d 320 (2009). In Britt II, the Supreme Court found that the Act, prior to the 2010 amendments, was unconstitutional as applied to the plaintiff Barney Britt. In stating its rationale for this holding, the Supreme Court reasoned that
[b]ased on the facts of plaintiff’s crime, his long post-conviction history of respect for the law, the absence of any evidence of violence by plaintiff, and the lack of any exception or possible relief from the statute’s operation, as applied to plaintiff, the 2004 version of N.C.G.S. § 14-415.1 is an unreasonable regulation ... .
Britt II, 363 N.C. at 550, 681 S.E.2d at 323.
Since Britt II was decided, the Act has been amended to allow for the restoration of firearms rights to felons who meet certain requirements. The General Assembly has ensured that the Act will no longer operate as a regulation towards those situated similarly to the plaintiff in Britt II. Plaintiff is expressly excluded from the class of felons who can apply to have their rights restored because one of his crimes was a Class F felony that includes possession of a firearm as an essential element of the offense, and because he has more than one conviction. See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-415.4(a)(2); § 14-415.4(d)(2) (20 ll)1. Thus, Plaintiff falls into the class of felons that our legislature intended to prohibit from owning firearms.
It is well settled that “a statute enacted by the General Assembly is presumed to be constitutional.” Wayne County Citizens Assn. for Better Tax Control v. Wayne County Bd. of Commrs., 328 N.C. 24, 29, 399 S.E.2d 311, 314-15 (1991). “A statute will not be declared unconstitutional unless this conclusion is so clear that no reasonable doubt can arise, or the statute cannot be upheld on any reasonable ground.” Id. (citing Poor Richard’s, Inc. v. Stone, 322 N.C. 61, 63, 366 S.E.2d 697, 698 (1988)).
' Aside from the 2010 amendments to the Act, the fact that Plaintiff committed a violent crime makes this case distinguishable from Britt II. See N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-288.8(c)(3) (2009) (defining a sawed off shotgun as a “weapon of mass death and destruction”). It is certainly reasonable for the General Assembly to decide that those felons who *32have not committed more than one crime, and have not committed any violent crimes, should be afforded an opportunity to have their rights to own firearms restored while repeat felons and those convicted of possession of dangerous firearms should not.
In concluding that Plaintiff has not committed any violent crimes, the majority focuses on Plaintiffs assertion that the sawed off shotgun in his possession was inoperable, and comments that the State failed to produce evidence that disputed this assertion. This argument is unavailing. It is not the State’s duty to re-try the cases against Plaintiff. In the analogous context of sentencing an offender with convictions from other jurisdictions pursuant to the Structured Sentencing Act, if the State shows by a preponderance of the evidence that an offense classified as a felony in another jurisdiction is classified as a Class I felony or higher in North Carolina, the conviction from the other jurisdiction is treated as that class of felony for assigning prior record points. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15A-1340.14(e) (2009). Our courts do not re-weigh the evidence in the other jurisdiction’s cases; we simply compare the statutory definitions. As this Court has previously stated, “[t]he comparison of the elements of an out-of-state criminal offense to those of a North Carolina criminal offense does not require the resolution of disputed facts. Rather, it involves statutory interpretation, which is a question of law.” State v. Hanton, 175 N.C. App. 250, 254-55, 623 S.E.2d 600, 604 (2006)(internal quotations and citations omitted). The same rationale should be applied here. Thus, I would overrule this argument.
II.
Plaintiff also argues that the Act is unconstitutional on its face, as it violates Article I, Section 30 of our state constitution, which provides “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed . . . .” N.C. Const, art. I, § 30. “The standard of review for questions concerning constitutional rights is de novo.” Row v. Row (Deese), 185 N.C. App. 450, 454, 650 S.E.2d 1, 4 (2007) (citation omitted). Plaintiff carries the burden of proving that the Act is facially unconstitutional, and to do so he “must establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the [a]ct would be valid. The fact that a statute might operate unconstitutionally under some conceivable set of circumstances is insufficient to render it wholly invalid.” State v. Thompson, 349 N.C. 483, 491, 508 S.E.2d 277, 282 (1998) (quoting United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745, 95 L. Ed. 2d 697, 707 (1987)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Facial challenges are rarely upheld “because it is the role of the legislature, rather than this Court, *33to balance disparate interests and find a workable compromise among them.” Beaufort Cty. Bd. of Educ. v. Beaufort Cty. Bd. of Comm’rs, 363 N.C. 500, 502, 681 S.E.2d 278, 280 (2009).
At the outset, I note that although Plaintiff argues for a stronger standard of review for his constitutional challenges, “[t]he rational basis standard for review of regulations upon the right to keep and bear arms has been articulated by North Carolina courts since at least 1921.” State v. Whitaker (Whitaker I), 201 N.C. App. 190, 198, 689 S.E.2d 395, 399 (2009) (citations omitted). Further, this Court has already considered, and rejected, facial challenges to the Act prior to the 2010 amendments. See Britt v. State (Britt I), 185 N.C. App. 610, 649 S.E.2d 402 (2007), rev’d on other grounds, 363 N.C. 546, 681 S.E.2d 320 (2009); Whitaker I, 201 N.C. App at 202-03, 689 S.E.2d at 403. The Act was amended subsequent to those decisions, but the 2010 amendments do not impose any additional restriction of felons’ rights to possess firearms. In fact, those amendments provide a process of restoration of rights for certain classes of felons. I decline to hold that this amendment makes an otherwise rational statute irrational, in the same way that our Supreme Court declined to find that the exception in the Act for antique firearms made the otherwise rational statute irrational. See State v. Whitaker (Whitaker II), 364 N.C. 404, 410, 700 S.E.2d 215, 219 (2010). Plaintiff does not meet his heavy burden of showing that the Act is facially unconstitutional.
III.
Plaintiff next asserts that the Act is an ex post facto law, a bill of attainder, or both. As a basis for this argument, Plaintiff contends that when the General Assembly amended the Act in 2004 and 2010, it effectively increased the punishment for his past crimes without the benefit of a judicial hearing, because he was stripped of the right to bear arms.
Ex post facto laws are expressly prohibited by the United States Constitution and the North Carolina State Constitution. See U.S. Const, art. I, § 10; N.C. Const, art. I, § 16. The constitutional prohibition on ex post facto laws implicates four types of laws:
1st. Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal; and punishes such action. 2d. Every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was, when committed. 3d. Every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment, than the law annexed to the crime, when committed. 4th. Every law *34that' alters the legal rules of evidence, and receives less, or different, testimony, than the law required at the time of the commission of the offence, in order to convict the offender.
State v. Wiley, 355 N.C. 592, 625, 565 S.E.2d 22, 45 (2002) (quoting Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U.S. 37, 42, 111 L. Ed. 2d 30, 38-39 (1990)) (citations omitted)). Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution also prohibits the passing of a bill of attainder, which “is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without a judicial trial.” United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303, 315, 90 L. Ed. 1252, 1259 (1946) (citation omitted).
The question of whether the Act is an impermissible ex post facto law or bill of attainder has already been considered by, and rejected by, our Supreme Court in Whitaker II. However, Plaintiff argues that his case is distinguishable from the plaintiff in Whitaker II because the plaintiff in Whitaker II had violated the Act whereas here, Plaintiff has complied with the Act at all times, and therefore should not be subjected to what he considers additional punishment. Plaintiff overlooks that this Court has already rejected the argument that the Act is an ex post facto law or a bill of attainder when applied to a plaintiff who had not violated the Act. In Britt I, we held:
[b]ecause the intent of the legislature was to create a non-punitive, regulatory scheme by amending N.C.G.S. § 14-415.1, and because the result of the amended statute is not so punitive in nature and effect as to override the legislative intent, N.C.G.S. § 14-415.1 is a non-punitive, regulatory scheme that does not violate the ex post facto clause under either the North Carolina Constitution or the United States Constitution.
185 N.C. App. at 616, 649 S.E.2d at 407. Because we found that the Act was not a form of punishment, we also found that it could not be an impermissible bill of attainder that imposes “punishment” without a judicial trial. See id. at 617, 649 S.E.2d at 407. Our decision in Britt I was overruled only in regard to our analysis of the as applied challenge. See Britt II, 363 N.C. at 550, 681 S.E.2d at 323 (“[W]e reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals to the extent that court determined N.C.G.S. § 14-415.1 can be constitutionally applied to plaintiff.”) Thus, we remain bound by the former decision of this Court. See In the Matter of Appeal from Civil Penalty, 324 N.C. 373, 384, 379 S.E.2d 30, 37 (1989)(“Where a panel of the Court of Appeals has decided the same issue, albeit in a different case, a subsequent panel of the same court is bound by that precedent, unless it has been overturned by a higher court.” (citations omitted)). The 2010 amendments *35to the Act have no bearing on the ex post facto and bill of attainder claims. Accordingly, this issue has already been decided.
IV.
Plaintiffs final argument is that the Act violates the Equal Protection Clause of both the U.S. and North Carolina Constitutions, which guarantee equal protection of the law for all citizens. See Kresge Co. v. Davis, 277 N.C. 654, 660, 178 S.E.2d 382, 385 (1971) (stating that the Equal Protection Clause of the XIV amendment has been expressly incorporated into Art. I, § 19 of our State Constitution). Plaintiff argues that the Act is overbroad in prohibiting any felons from owning a firearm, and thus violates his right of equal protection under the law.
Plaintiff insists that this issue should be reviewed under the standard of strict scrutiny, as he repeatedly refers to “a compelling state interest.” If this Court were to assume, arguendo, that Plaintiff is correct, his argument would be without merit. Although Plaintiff bases his argument on the 2004 amendments to the Act, his argument cannot be decided without considering the Act with the 2010 amendments included. The Act no longer prohibits all felons from owning firearms interminably; nonviolent felons can apply to have their rights to possess firearms restored. Thus, the distinction the General Assembly made was not only between felons and nonfelons, as Plaintiff asserts, but between felons with convictions of violent crimes and nonviolent felons. The trial court properly asserted that the distinction between felons whose crimes involved firearms and those whose crimes did not involve firearms is necessary to serve the compelling state interest in public safety.
Plaintiff also attempts to assert an Equal Protection claim on behalf of the family members of those felons who have lost their right to possess firearms. I would decline to address this issue, because Plaintiff does not have standing to assert this claim. These families, including Plaintiff’s wife, are not parties to this proceeding, and there is no basis on which we find that Plaintiff has standing to assert a claim on behalf of these families’ right to bear arms when they do not assert that claim on their own behalf. See Tileston v. Ullman, State’s Attorney, et al., 318 U.S. 44, 46, 87 L. Ed. 603, 604 (1943).

. N.C. Gen. Stat § 14-415.4 Was an amendment to the Act which allows certain felons to petition for restoration of their rights to own firearms. It was made effective 1 February 2011 by 2010 N.C. Sess. Laws ch. 108, § 7.