In Kellogg v. Nichols, No. 23-8093 (2d Cir. Mar. 5, 2026), the Second Circuit affirms dismissal of a gun-rights case filed against a state court judge who serves as a statutory firearms licensing officer, both on absolute immunity and Article III grounds.
The plaintiffs sued “New York state court Judge Jonathan D. Nichols,” in his official and individual capacities, for “unconstitutionally reject[ing] their applications for a firearms license under New York State’s Penal Law § 400.00 in violation of [plaintffs’] Second and Fourteenth Amendment rights.” The district court “dismissed the individual-capacity claims as barred by absolute judicial immunity” while “dismiss[ing] the Plaintiffs’ official-capacity claims for injunctive and declaratory relief.”
The Second Circuit affirms. The case turns on the judge’s role in the denial of the permits.
“New York residents seeking a firearms license must apply to their local licensing officer. [N.Y. Penal Law] § 400.00(3). In Columbia County, New York, where the Plaintiffs reside, the licensing officer is ‘a judge or justice of a court of record having his office in the county of issuance,’ including, as relevant here, a county court judge. Id. § 265.00(10). After a local police investigation, the licensing officer reviews the application and must ‘either deny the application for reasons specifically and concisely stated in writing or grant the application and issue the license applied for.’ Id. § 400.00(4-b).”
The plaintiffs, as regards their claim for damages, were already behind the 8-Ball because the circuit had already held in Libertarian Party of Erie Cnty. v. Cuomo, 970 F.3d 106 (2d Cir. 2020) (abrogated on other grounds by N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022)) that judges were absolutely immune in their role of issuing gun licenses. They “nevertheless ask[ed the panel] to overturn it as wrongly decided,” an invitation that – as a three-judge panel – they are obliged to decline. (Ed. note: the argument may have been raised here simply to tee it up for en banc review.)
The principal argument, therefore, was whether plaintiff might still have a claim for declaratory and injunctive relief against the judge in his official capacity. While states and their judicial officers may be immune from damages under the Eleventh Amendment, it is still possible to obtain injunctive relief against a state officer to prospectively remedy a constitutional violation.
The argument then turned on whether there was sufficient “adversity” between the judge and plaintiffs for three to be a “Case or Controversy” under Article III, and the district court and Second Circuit hold “no.” “Without a case or controversy between adverse parties, a federal court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over an action.”
The panel begins with the well-settled principle that “no case or controversy” exists “between a judge who adjudicates claims under a statute and a litigant who attacks the constitutionality of the statute.” Pulliam v. Allen, 466 U.S. 522, 538 n.18 (1984).
As to whether a judge is performing an adjudicatory role, courts “adopted a functional approach” that considers “factors such as whether the judge may initiate proceedings under the statute; whether the judge who has issued the order is responsible for enforcing it; whether the judge played a role in enacting the statute pursuant to which the order was issued; whether the judge is adequately alleged to have a personal or institutional stake in upholding the statute; whether the challenged act is ‘a traditionally administrative task,’ or ministerial task, like ‘fee collection’; and whether the challenged statutory scheme ‘allows for traditional judicial safeguards’” [ciations omitted].
Decisions from the Second Circuit and other circuits support the “conclusion that there is no live case or controversy between New York state court judges serving as firearms licensing officers and litigants challenging the State’s licensing scheme.” This is because “a judge . . . acts in an adjudicatory—rather than an enforcement or administrative—capacity when the judge, in various non-adversarial contexts, decides whether single-party applications satisfy relevant legal requirements, e.g., when authorizing search or arrest warrants, or the interception of electronic communications, or when ruling on attorney-licensure applications.”
“[W]hen New York state judges rule on firearm license applications, they are adjudicating whether the application satisfies the requirements of state law. Our Court’s rationale for recognizing such decisions as judicial rather than administrative for purposes of determining judicial immunity in Libertarian Party, 970 F.3d at 125, applies equally for purposes of determining jurisdiction.”
The plaintiffs’ principal rejoinder is “that firearm-licensing judges are enforcers, not adjudicators” – and thus sufficiently adverse for Article III – “because a number of state-court cases label them as such,” citing a host of New York appellate cases so noting. But the panel notes that “[r]egardless of the labels or titles that a state attaches to a particular role, the [Article III] functional analysis is for the federal courts to undertake.”
The panel concludes that “[o]ur decision is narrow. The functional approach necessarily contemplates a case-by-case analysis. All that we consider is our jurisdiction to review the Plaintiffs’ § 1983 claims against Judge Nichols in his official capacity under the circumstances of this case. We do not tackle whether Article III would bar claims for declaratory or injunctive relief against state court judges in other circumstances.”
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