Jane Doe v. Rob Bonta

What the court held

Five registered California gun owners sued over Assembly Bill 173, which requires the state Department of Justice to share identifying information about firearm and ammunition purchasers and concealed-carry permit holders with the University of California-Davis firearm violence research center and permits sharing with other accredited research institutions. The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal, holding the largely biographical data is not the sort of intimate information protected by the right to informational privacy, that AB 173 regulates the state agency rather than conduct covered by the Second Amendment's plain text, that the law is not impermissibly retroactive because it attaches no new legal consequences to past purchases, and that the federal Privacy Act does not preempt the cited California permit statutes.

Summarized from the court's opinion.

What this case is about

informational privacy and Second Amendment challenge to California's release of firearm owners' personal information

GunMapUSA summary of the issue, not a quotation from the court.

Key Dates

• 2024-05-08 — Decided
• 2024-02-09 — Argued

Sources

• CourtListener — retrieved 2026-08-08