Florida Appeals Court Strikes Down Concealed Carry Ban for Adults Ages 18 to 20

What the Court Decided

On Wednesday, June 17, Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeals unanimously struck down the state law barring adults ages 18 to 20 from carrying concealed firearms, ruling it unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

Judge Spencer D. Levine wrote the opinion for the three-judge panel, which also included Chief Judge Jeffrey T. Kuntz and Judge Shannon K. Shaw, according to CiberCuba and the NY Post. The case was Eubanks v. State, arising from the 2024 arrest of Jaylen Eubanks, who was 18 at the time and was found with an unholstered firearm on his waist after officers responded to a call about someone displaying a handgun. He was charged with carrying a concealed firearm and improper exhibition.

A trial court rejected Eubanks's Second Amendment challenge. The Fourth DCA reversed.

The Legal Logic

The court leaned on U.S. Supreme Court precedent — specifically Heller, Bruen, and Rahimi — to conclude that 18-to-20-year-olds fall within "the people" protected by the Second Amendment, according to Tippah News.

"Eighteen- to 20-year-olds can defend the country without restriction but can only utilize their Second Amendment right to self-defense with severe restrictions," Levine wrote, as quoted by the NY Post. He added that treating those adults as a lesser class would make the Second Amendment "a second-class right."

The panel also rejected Florida's argument that young adults could be treated like historically restricted categories such as felons or the mentally ill. The court pointed to founding-era militia laws requiring 18-year-olds to serve while bearing arms as evidence that no comparable historical restriction existed, according to Tippah News.

Florida, the panel concluded, failed to identify a historical tradition supporting the ban.

How This Ruling Reached the Finish Line

The law was not without defenders. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier had declined to defend it, announcing in February 2026 that his office considered the restriction unconstitutional. With the state's top law enforcement officer refusing to argue for the law, the Broward County State Attorney's Office sought to intervene.

Broward State Attorney Harold F. Pryor pushed back directly. "Given the impact of gun crimes in the state of Florida, including the mass shooting on February 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, we respectfully disagree with the position taken by the Office of the Attorney General," Pryor stated, according to CiberCuba.

The Parkland shooting killed 17 people. The Florida Legislature enacted the age restriction specifically in response to that massacre. Pryor and supporters of the law argue that restricting concealed carry for this age group is a reasonable safety measure, and that the volume of gun crime involving young adults gives the state a legitimate interest in drawing the line at 21. The concern is not abstract: a law passed by an elected legislature to address a real mass casualty event is now being overridden by a court applying an originalist framework that, critics argue, fails to account for modern circumstances.

The court was not persuaded. The Bruen framework demands a historical analog, and Florida didn't produce one.

This Wasn't the First Ruling Going This Direction

In October 2025, Broward County Circuit Judge Frank Ledee issued a nine-page ruling in the case of Joel Walkes — a 19-year-old arrested for carrying a semi-automatic pistol in his waistband — reaching the same constitutional conclusion, according to WFSU Public Media. Ledee wrote that Florida's ban "strips a class of legal adults of their ability to exercise the very right the Constitution guarantees." The appellate ruling Wednesday builds on that lower-court momentum and carries statewide binding weight the circuit-level ruling did not.

What Happens Next

Uthmeier confirmed on X that the state will NOT seek further review. "We will not seek further review and will work with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to implement the courts order," he wrote, according to the NY Post.

The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services oversees Florida's concealed carry licensing system, meaning the implementation now falls to that agency to bring into compliance.

The law being struck down is the concealed carry age restriction, which is separate from Florida's post-Parkland ban on people under 21 purchasing long guns. That restriction remains untouched by this ruling, as WFSU Public Media noted.

Whether Broward County or another jurisdiction mounts an independent legal challenge to force the issue further up the appellate chain, or whether the Florida Legislature moves to rewrite the statute with historical evidence courts might find sufficient under Bruen, remains to be seen. Pryor's public disagreement with Uthmeier signals that local prosecutors may not simply stand down.