Florida 3-Judge Panel: Constitution Protects Open Carry

A three-judge panel of Florida’s First District Court of Appeal ruled on September 10, 2025, that the constitution protects the right to carry a gun openly for self-defense.

The three judges were Stephanie Ray, Lori Rowe, and M. Kemmerly Thomas. The case regarding the ban came to the judges on appeal from the County Court for Escambia County, after that court upheld the ban.

Ray wrote the majority opinion, noting that the court was weighing Florida’s open carry ban in light of Bruen (2022), ascertaining whether the ban “regulates conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s plain text” and if it “is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

She then noted that the Second Amendment “does not distinguish between modes of carry” when it addresses the right to bear arms. She stated, “Florida’s Open Carry Ban is therefore inconsistent with the plain text of the Second Amendment.”

After the judges weighed the the ban by the historical record, Ray wrote:

On this record, the State has failed to carry its burden. It identifies no Founding-era law that broadly prohibited the open carry of firearms in public. Nor does it cite any historical regulation imposing a burden or justification comparable to Florida’s Open Carry Ban. At most, it has pointed to laws regulating the method or manner of carry, but those laws left intact the ability to bear arms openly for peaceable purposes.

The ruling continued, “By contrast, Florida’s Open Carry Ban eliminates that option
altogether and thus extends far beyond anything recognized in our
historical tradition.”