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Watching some kettles boil....

"The watched kettle never boils," so the saying goes, but there are several involved here.

First, Peruta v. San Diego. There a Ninth Circuit panel struck down California's combination of permit requirements for all carry, whether open or concealed, and issuance of permits on a "may issue" basis. On March 26, court granted rehearing en banc (in theory before the entire court rather than a three judge panel, in practice here a hearing before ten judges plus the chief judge). Argument was held on June 16, so we're coming up on five months wait.

I don't know if we can read much into that. The Ninth Circuit keeps an an online list of cases taken en banc. I see two, taken en banc at the same time as Peruta and argued a day later, which are also undecided. There's also one which was decided -- 11 months after it was taken en banc. So long delays are pretty common. It probably takes a lot more time to work things out among eleven judges than it does among three.

The other case of note is Friedman v. City of Highland Park, where a cert petition is pending in the Supreme Court. The Court announces when a cert petition will be considered in conference and voted upon. Friedman has had that, and been "re-listed" three times now. That is, put over until the next conference. That's quite unusual in my experience. The one thing that seems likely is that the Court is taking it seriously, and either (1) there's enough undecided votes to where they could give it cert if the undecideds go for it or (2) the Court has decided to deny cert, and one or more Justices want time to write a dissent from denial.

One interesting thing pointed out in the link above is that the Court did take cert. in Voisin v. US. That petition had a two-pronged attack on a conviction for possession after a DV misdemeanor--does the Federal statute cover DVs that involve reckless rather than intentional conduct, and does the statute violate the right to arms? The Court took cert., but only on the first issue. This might indicate that the Court is not inclined to revisit its 2A cases right now.