Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation, and gun owner Richard Hughes originally filed their lawsuit in the Southern District of Florida last August, alleging that the law banning open carry violates the Second and Fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution and places them, their members, and their supporters at risk of being arrested and prosecuted should they openly carry firearms in public.
St. Lucie County Sheriff Richard Del Toro is the lone defendant in the case. In their lawsuit, Hughes and the two gun rights organizations list him because the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office warned the public after the state legalized what is known as “permitless carry” in 2023 that “[t]he law is not open carry; open carry is still illegal under most circumstances.”
In 2017, the Florida Supreme Court upheld state restrictions on openly carrying a firearm, ruling in Norman v. State that the law did not violate citizens’ Second Amendment rights in a case brought by Dale Lee Norman, a St. Lucie County resident who faced a second-degree misdemeanor charge after he walked down a road with handgun holstered to his hip, according to the Courthouse News Service.
The federal lawsuit says that state Supreme Court ruling failed on a couple of fronts: for “not once consulting contemporaneous authorities to discern the meaning of the Second Amendment’s text” and for failure to conduct an historical analysis of the “nation’s early tradition as to open carry — or any tradition, for that matter.”
“This case is personal for me and millions of gun owners across the state,” said Luis Valdes, Florida state director for Gun Owners of America. “Florida likes to brand itself as pro-Second Amendment, but this ban proves otherwise. We are fighting to restore a right that never should’ve been taken away — and we won’t stop until every Floridian can carry openly, freely, and constitutionally.”
“Florida’s open carry ban is an outdated and unconstitutional relic,” Sam Parades said in a statement on behalf of the board of directors for Gun Owners Foundation. “The right to bear arms means exactly that — to carry arms, not just to keep them locked away.”
Florida remains one of only five states in the nation that bans the open carrying of a firearm, the others being Illinois, Connecticut, New York, and California — a list of blue states that Florida does not usually share an alliance with.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has said on several occasions that he supports open carry, and First Lady Casey DeSantis weighed in as well earlier this year, writing on X that, “It’s time for the Free State of Florida to join other states in enacting open carry! Sounds like a great priority for our GOP supermajority. This is the year.”
But it wasn’t the year for open carry in Florida’s GOP-dominated state Legislature. Senate President Ben Albritton stated his opposition to overturning the ban in his first day as leader while meeting with reporters last November.
A trial date has been set for November 3, 2025.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2025.