One Permit or Fifty? Minnesota Gun Owner Asks Supreme Court Whether Americans Need a License From Every State to Carry

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

WASHINGTON, DC — A Minnesota gun owner has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether Americans must obtain a firearm license from each state in order to exercise their Second Amendment rights across the country. Jeffrey M. Johnson, Sr., represented by Ryan Morrison of the Liberty Justice Center as counsel of record, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in Johnson v. Jacobson, naming Minnesota Department of Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson, in his official capacity, as the respondent. The case sits on the Court’s docket as No. 26-255.

A petition for a writ of certiorari is a request that the Supreme Court agree to hear a case. The Court has not decided whether to take this one, and nothing in the filing is a ruling. It is one side’s argument for why the justices should step in.

The petition presents two questions. First, “whether Americans must obtain a firearm license from each state to exercise their Second Amendment rights across the Nation.” Second, “whether state firearm license reciprocity statutes that do not recognize firearm licenses issued by all other states are valid under” the Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that the right to bear arms includes carrying a handgun in public for self-defense.

Here is the reciprocity piece in plain terms. Every state that issues carry permits also decides which other states’ permits it will honor. Some states sign formal agreements with each other. Others simply recognize out-of-state permits on their own, no agreement required. Some honor everyone, and some honor only a short list. My concealed carry reciprocity maps show how those choices play out state by state, and my Minnesota concealed carry page covers where Minnesota currently lands. Johnson’s petition takes aim at the second question above: whether a state that picks and chooses among other states’ licenses can square that with Bruen.

The case did not start at the Supreme Court. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota under the caption McCoy and Johnson v. Jacobson, No. 25-cv-54, where judgment was entered on September 11, 2025. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals took it up as No. 25-3036 and entered judgment on May 26, 2026. Johnson, who was the plaintiff-appellant in the Eighth Circuit, is now asking the Supreme Court to review that decision.

The petition’s argument runs on two tracks. The first is that states cannot turn the Second Amendment into a second-class right. The second is that state reciprocity statutes must recognize licenses from other states under Bruen, because refusing to honor another state’s license reaches conduct covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, and because, in the petition’s words, America does not have a historic tradition of denying Second Amendment rights to “proven, ordinary, law-abiding citizens.” That framing tracks the two-step test Bruen laid out: if the conduct falls within the text, the government has to show a historical tradition that supports the restriction.

The “proven” part of that phrase is doing real work. A person carrying on an out-of-state permit has already cleared a background check and whatever training and application process his home state demands. The petition’s position is that a state line does not change who that person is or what he has already proven about himself. Minnesota, and every other state that draws a line between recognized and unrecognized permits, will argue it has the authority to set its own standards. That is the dispute the Court is being asked to resolve.

This is not the first time Commissioner Jacobson and Minnesota’s carry law have been in front of the justices. In March 2025, the Second Amendment Foundation announced it had filed a response brief in Jacobson v. Worth, a challenge to Minnesota’s ban on licensed carry by adults ages 18 to 20, and asked the Court to grant review and set the case for argument. Different issue, same statute book, same Court.

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Reciprocity is the single most common question I get from readers who travel, and for good reason. A permit that is perfectly valid at home can become worthless the moment you cross a border, and the burden of knowing that falls entirely on the carrier. Part of a serious carry mindset is checking the law in every state on the route before the trip, not after. Johnson’s petition asks whether that patchwork is something the Constitution tolerates at all, or whether Bruen already answered the question. Whether the Court wants to take that up is the next thing to watch.

I will continue tracking Johnson v. Jacobson as the Court decides whether to grant the petition.