BOSTON — The state’s highest court has issued a pair of decisions regarding the rights of nonresidents to carry firearms through the Bay State, finding that, while some of the commonwealth’s old licensing rules were in fact unconstitutional, changes made to the law in the wake of a major 2022 Supreme Court decisions pass the legal sniff test.

The decisions issued by the Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday — Commonwealth v. Dean F. Donnell, Jr. and Commonwealth v. Philip J. Marquis — both deal with charges levied against nonresident gun owners found to be unlawfully in possession of firearms after police responded to a car crash scene in Massachusetts, and the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen on the state’s relevant gun laws.

According to the court, a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm filed in the Donnell case failed to meet constitutional scrutiny because the underlying law allowed the Colonel of the Massachusetts State Police too much discretion on who could and could not possess a firearm, regardless of their suitability otherwise.

In such a case, according to the court, the issue with the law lies with its wording, specifically the “may issue” phrase prohibited after the Bruen decision, and because “it vested impermissible discretion in the licensing authority to grant or deny firearm licenses to nonresidents.”

“We hold that the version of the Commonwealth’s nonresident firearm licensing scheme in effect at the time of the offense violates the Second Amendment. Accordingly, as the defendant was charged with violating (the law) after the Supreme Court issued Bruen, he is entitled to dismissal of that charge,” Associate Justice Frank Gaziano wrote for the court.

In deciding Bruen, according to Gaziano, “The Supreme Court indicated that such discretionary ‘may issue’ firearm licensing regimes are presumptively invalid.”

Marquis faced a similar charge that came well after the Bruen decision and after the Bay State updated its firearms laws to remove instances of “may issue” and replaced them with “shall issue” rules.

A lower court originally agreed with the defendant’s motion to dismiss a charge of unlawful possession of a firearm, noting the Commonwealth had failed to “meet its burden under Bruen” by demonstrating that the state’s nonresident rules were “consistent with the nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation” and therefore still constitutional.

According to the Supreme Judicial Court, that constitutional challenge to the state’s updated nonresident licensing scheme fails because the law was changed to remove discretion from licensing authorities, and Marquis’ motion to see his charges undone fails because he never attempted to secure a license to carry before he was charged for not having one.

“The defendant has standing to bring an as-applied challenge to the Commonwealth’s nonresident firearm licensing scheme if — but only if — the defendant applied for (and was denied) a license under that scheme,” the judge wrote. “Because the defendant did not do so, he lacks standing to bring an as-applied challenge to the Commonwealth’s nonresident firearm licensing scheme.”

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