Will SCOTUS Decide to Hear Another Second Amendment Case?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Feb. 19, 2026) — On December 3, 2025, Montgomery Blair Sibley filed a petition for a Writ of Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in a Second Amendment case originating in his home state of New York after he filed an application for a pistol permit in 2019.

His application was denied, Sibley wrote on page 1 of the petition, “based upon secret evidence undisclosed to Petitioner,” which, he claimed, demonstrated that the New York State and federal “justice systems” are employing standards “far below Constitutional minimums” to render rulings.

To the high court, Sibley posed four questions:

WHETHER federal in forma pauperis litigants may be significantly denied immediate access to the Court while filing-fee paying litigants suffer no such constraints as the Second Circuit has here below tacitly approved?

WHETHER New York’s handgun licensing substantive law and licensing adjudicative practices denied Petitioner: (i) His Second Amendment rights, (ii) due process and (iii) equal protection?

WHETHER the Second Circuit’s refusal to address significant issues raised by Petitioner by summarily claiming those issues were “without merit” impermissibly trespassed upon Petitioner’s right to “petition” and be meaningfully “heard” and thereby breached the settled principle that litigants in similar situations should be treated the same, a fundamental component of stare decisis and the rule of law?

WHETHER the corrigendum of 42 United States Code §1983 required by the “separation-of-powers” principle and intellectual integrity obligates this Court to reconsider the scope of the judge-made doctrine of judicial immunity stated in Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547, 554 (1967)?

Representing the defendants is New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, who served for a short time as New York attorney general following the scandal-driven resignation of Eric Schneidermann.

Sibley initially chronicled the case on his blog Amo Probos (the Scottish clan Blair’s motto, “I Love the Virtuous”).

On August 23, 2019, he reported filing a federal lawsuit over the state’s “criminalization of handgun possession in the home in clear violation of the Second Amendment” as well as a lawsuit against three officials of Steuben County, NY on the basis of “Article 78 of the New
York Civil Practice Law and Rules (“CPLR”).”

Defendants Steuben County pistol permit clerk, the county sheriff’s office and Licencing [sic] Officer Chauncey J. Watches, who is also a judge, were sued, Sibley wrote in his complaint, for their failure to respond to his July 5, 2019 Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests by July 24 for “a copy of records thereof pertaining to all Pistol /Revovler [sic] License in Steuben County for the years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, including, without limitation, mine.”

“Albany has created a secret, extrajudicial, Red Flag system to deny New Yorkers the right to possess handguns in their homes as secured by the Second Amendment,” Sibley wrote in his post. “That system secrets pistol permit applications and determinations from public view.  By hiding the “why” who is getting ‒ and who is not getting pistol permits ‒ Albany can and is treating persons seeking a pistol permit who are similarly situated differently.  That allows for the arbitrary and discriminatory granting of pistol permits and thus violates Equal Protection guarantees.”

On July 24, 2019, Sibley expounded on his rationale for filing the suit:

Young George Washington’s first military and diplomatic venture came in the Fall and Winter 1753 – 1754 through Western Pennsylvania.  He was accompanied by my Fifth Great Grandfather, Christopher Gist (1706 – 1759)*.  Martin J. O’Brien of the Harmony Museum, recounts the story:

At one point, Washington and his traveling companion, Christopher Gist, had a mishap on the Connoquenessing Creek. They tried to take this raft across the Allegheny River, and Washington was controlling it with a pole, and didn’t do a very good job because he ended up being thrown into the river. And with all the wet wool clothes that they used to wear, it was very fortunate that he was able to be saved by Gist.

Washington was the catalyst of the Revolution, he was the leader of the Constitutional Convention, he held everything together throughout the Revolution and afterwards, when we formed our government. And I truly believe, had Washington been killed, that our nation’s history would be quite different and the history of the world, the modern world as we know it, would be quite different.

The way I look at it, I have little choice other than to jump in and assert the fundamental rights of resistance and self-preservation in my home than my great, great, great, great, grandfather Christopher Gist did to jump in the Connoquenessing Creek and save young George Washington from drowning: Indeed, less choice.

Also in the post is a timeline of events in the case:

• On July 18, 2018, I filed my State of New York Pistol/Revolver License Application (“Application”) with the Clerk of Steuben County. The Application was referred to Chauncey J. Watches, a New York Penal Law §265.00(10) Pistol/Revolver Licensing Officer for Steuben County, New York and, incidentally, a County Court Judge. 
• On May 29, 2019 ‒ three hundred fifteen (315) days or 10 ½ months after I filed my Application ‒ Chauncey J. Watches sent me a letter denying to me a Pistol/Revolver License stating in pertinent part: (i) That he had reviewed my application and “the investigation submitted by the Steuben County Sheriff’s Department”; (ii) “The basis for the denial results from concerns about your being sufficiently responsible to possess and care for a pistol”; (iii) “[T]he Court is concerned that your history demonstrates that you place your own interest above the interests of society”.
• In response to my request for the factual basis of his decision, on June 25, 2019, Chauncey J. Watches wrote me stating that:“I have reviewed your requests for information and documents and find them to be without legal basis and therefore they are denied.”

Sibley quoted from the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in which the Court held that “Private citizens have the right under the Second Amendment to possess an ordinary type of weapon and use it for lawful, historically established situations such as self-defense in a home, even when there is no relationship to a local militia.”

“…faced with a denial-without-explanation by Chauncey J. Watches of my Application upon “secret” evidence against me,” Sibley continued, “I have loosed three litigation dogs of war; the first being the above federal lawsuit. Subsequent posts on this blog will update the full nature and progress of my three litigation hell-hounds through the treacle-slow process of litigation.”

A hearing was scheduled on his suit for September 9, 2019, Sibley further reported on August 23, at the Steuben County Courthouse but did not result in the granting of a pistol permit to Sibley.

In an adjunct action on May 13, 2020 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, Sibley sued U.S. District Judge Frank Geraci for “his refusal to rule upon my Motion to Proceed in forma pauperis for seventy-nine (79) days” which he said “denied to me my absolute right to access court for redress of my grievances and to seek protection of my fundamental, constitutional and statutory rights.”

Geraci should be forced to forfeit his office, Sibley claimed.

His allegation was dismissed as “frivolous,” Sibley later reported, by Judge Catherine O’Hagan Wolfe, resulting in his appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and to include Wolfe and Court Clerk Mary C. Loewenguth.

On March 10, 2021, regarding the New York case, Sibley reported on the blog (scroll down), “I had my ten (10) minute oral argument in my Second Amendment Lawsuit before the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, Fourth Department” with a link to the hearing. The post followed one in which Sibley wrote that the court denied his request to record the session.

Additional denials by the Second Circuit and New York courts resulted in Sibley’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a January 13, 2026 Substack post, Sibley wrote of his petition to the high court:

It is not hyperbole if it is true. SCOTUS Case No.: 25-795, Sibley v. Watches et al. is proof of this maxim.  This Second Amendment challenge started in 2018 when I was denied a pistol permit in New York based upon secret evidence from the Sheriff which the Licensing Officer refused to disclose to me.

Through the next seven years, the case metamorphosed into a forensic exposition of the descent of the New York State and federal justice systems far below Constitutional minimums.  As a result, four (4) important questions are now presented to SCOTUS for review:

1. In this case, I proceeded as an in forma pauperis litigant seeking to avoid paying the filing fee of $450.  Federal District Court Judge Geraci refused to rule on that request for seventy-nine (79) days thus denying me immediate access to Court for preliminary injunctive relief.  In contrast, filing-fee litigants receive immediate access to court for injunctive relief.  Hence, the first question presented to SCOTUS is whether poor people have the same right to immediate access to court as well-heeled litigants?

2. New York’s handgun licensing substantive law and licensing adjudicative practices denied me: (i) my Second Amendment rights, (ii) due process and (iii) equal protection.  In particular, substantively, notwithstanding repeated SCOTUS cases regarding “good moral character” licensing regimes being unconstitutional, New York continued to use that standard in my case.  Substantively, New York prohibited me from seeing the Sheriff’s secret report on me and denied my requests to present evidence on my own behalf.

3. Much more important than the particular trespasses upon my Constitutional rights detailed above, was the process of adjudication by both the New York and federal appellate courts of these issues.  Here, New York’s appellate courts and the federal Second Circuit refused to address these and other significant issues I raised by summarily claiming those issues were “without merit”.  By doing so, those judges impermissibly trespassed upon my right to “petition” and be meaningfully “heard”.  If appellate courts can “black hole” issues by refusing to acknowledge, let alone address, those issues then the settled principle that litigants in similar situations should be treated the same, a fundamental component of stare decisis and the rule of law no longer exists.  Hence, the third question for SCOTUS is whether judges can ignore issues with impunity?

4. Last, and most important as it challenges the intellectual integrity of SCOTUS, is the required corrigendum (a thing to be corrected, typically an error in a printed book) of 42 U.S.C. §1983, commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.  That Act subjects state actors to personal liability for violating the federal civil rights of citizens.  I sued several New York judges under that Act.  District Court Judge Geraci held that those New York judges were immune from suit under that Act pursuant to Pierson v. Ray, 386 U. S. 547, 554 (1967).  In Pierson, SCOTUS held: “[J]judge[s are] immune from liability for damages for his judicial acts was not abolished by §1983.”   BUT: the Ku Klux Klan Act was printed wrong at 42 U.S.C. §1983 as it left out thirteen (13) words from the Ku Klux Klan Act which abolished the “absolute immunity” that judges have granted themselves.  When the complete Ku Klux Klan Act is read in its entirety, Pierson and judicial immunity disappears.

Hence, the hyperbole is not hyperbole.  If our Courts can act as this case so indisputably documents ‒ treating poor people differently, ignoring due process and significant legal issues and then misreading a statute to achieve desired results ‒ we no longer have a justice system, but “just-a-system”.

I invite you to read the attached Petition; the substantive part is only fifteen (15) pages long.  I believe you will be disturbed at how the legal system actually operates to favor vested and well-funded interests.

Montgomery Blair Sibley

On February 4, the Court scheduled the case for conference for Friday, February 20. Only a fraction of cases so reviewed are scheduled for oral argument.