In 2021 in Orange County, Eward Anthony Ceja, a convicted felon, was involved in an incident of road rage and shot a gun into another vehicle. The Orange County Sheriffs later arrested Mr. Ceja while he was holding a backpack containing methamphetamine and a loaded handgun.
Mr. Ceja took his case to trial and was convicted of assault with a firearm and being a felon in possession of ammunition, as well as one count of possessing a controlled substance while armed with a firearm. The jury also found true that he had three prior strike convictions and three prior serious felony convictions.
At sentencing, the judge dismissed four of Mr. Ceja’s prior convictions and imposed a term of 17 years in state prison.
On appeal to the Fourth Appellate District in Santa Ana, Mr. Ceja made one argument: California Penal Code § 30305(a)(1), prohibiting a felon from possessing ammunition, facially violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Penal Code § 30305(a)(1) provides: “No person prohibited from owning or possessing a firearm . . . shall own, possess, or have under custody or control, any ammunition or reloaded ammunition.”
His appeal seemed to rely upon the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022) 597 U.S. ____, 142 S. Ct. 2111, which was decided after Mr. Ceja’s trial, but before he filed his appeal.
In Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed the claims of two New York citizens (Koch and Nash) who requested licenses to carry handguns in public. The requests were denied because a New York state law generally prohibited carrying a firearm outside of the home unless the applicant could “prove that ‘proper cause exists’” in order to obtain the license.
The Supreme Court held that “the Second and Fourteenth Amendment protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self defense outside the home.” Bruen, at 2122. The Court found the challenged New York law violated the Fourteenth Amendment in that it prevented law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.” Id. at 2156.
The Supreme Court emphasized: “It is undisputed that petitioners Koch and Nash – two ordinary, law-abiding, adult citizens – are part of ‘the people’ whom the Second Amendment protects.” Id., 2134. Therefore, the New York law requiring a showing of “proper cause” was an unconstitutional restriction on the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
This ruling immediately was seized upon by gun rights advocates nation wide and a tidal wave of constitutional challenges to state laws commenced. Mr. Ceja’s claim is just one of these many cases.
In addressing Mr. Ceja’s claim, the Fourth District, with Justice Eileen Moore writing the opinion (who we greatly admire for her tireless advocacy of veteran’s rights), began its analysis by reminding the reader of two important legal issues that frame the appeal. First, that the Second Amendment states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Second, that California’s laws prohibiting felons from possessing firearms and ammunition do not violate the Constitution because “only law-abiding citizens are included among ‘the people’ whose right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment.” People v. Alexander (2023) 91 Cal. App. 5th 469, 478.
In other words, as stated in
District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) 554 U.S. 570, “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” The Heller court stated the “right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
Id. at 626. The Court noted, “the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens.”
Id. at 625.
The Heller court explained, “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” Id. at pp. 626-627.
Justice Moore’s opinion then firmly shut the door on Mr. Ceja, explaining that Bruen did not invalidate Penal Code § 30305(a)(1) or his conviction under this section because Mr. Ceja, a felon, was not a part of the “law-abiding, responsible citizens” group the Second Amendment protects.
Justice Moore then discussed Alexander, supra, wherein a jury in San Bernardino County convicted Mr. Alexander, a felon, of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of Penal Code § 29800(a)(1) and being a felon in possession of ammunition, Penal Code § 30305(a)(1). On appeal, Mr. Alexander said both statutes were facially invalid under Bruen.
The Fourth Appellate District held that Mr. Alexander, a convicted felon, was by definition not a law-abiding citizen. He is not among “the people” who have an individual right to possess firearms under the Second Amendment, so his challenge to the statutes failed. Alexander, supra at 479; see also People v. Odell (2023) 92 Cal. App. 5th 307, 316-317 (statutes prohibiting felons from possessing firearms are constitutional under the Second Amendment).
Justice Moore then respectfully denied Mr. Ceja’s appeal and affirmed the judgment, stating that the Fourth District agreed with the reasoning in Alexander.