Two Valid Carry Permits, a Locked Case at the Minnesota Line, and Now a Supreme Court Docket Number
Jeffrey Johnson holds carry permits from Florida and Georgia. Minnesota honors neither, and the Eighth Circuit ruled that the law behind that refusal cannot be challenged at all. Now the Supreme Court has it.
Concealed carry reciprocity is now in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The question is whether a man who’s proved to two states that he’s fit to carry a handgun can be made to prove it again every time his truck crosses a state line.
The case is Johnson v. Jacobson, No. 26-255. The Liberty Justice Center filed the petition for certiorari on August 24, 2026, the Court docketed it on August 27, and Minnesota’s response is due September 28.
What the petition asks: Two questions. First, “Whether Americans must obtain a firearm license from each state to exercise their Second Amendment rights across the Nation.” Second, “Whether state firearm license reciprocity statutes that do not recognize firearm licenses issued by all other states are valid under N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).”
Johnson isn’t asking to abolish permits. He’s asking whether the one he already earned counts once he leaves home. The petition leans on Wolford v. Lopez, the Hawaii carry fight we covered, arguing Minnesota does the same thing to him on a larger geographic scale.
Who this reaches: Anyone whose permit changes value at a state line, which is most people who carry. Minnesota is not unusual in kind, only in the length of its list. A carry permit is worth whatever the next state decides it is worth, and Maryland has decided that no other state’s permit is worth anything at all.
Jeffrey M. Johnson, Sr. is a long-haul truck driver who “travels across the United States and makes regular, annual trips to or through Minnesota.” He holds valid carry licenses from Florida and Georgia. Because of “the prevalence of violent crimes” against truckers, he “carries a handgun with him in the cab of his truck for self-defense.”
Nobody disputes that he’s eligible. The Eighth Circuit called him a “law-abiding citizen with no history of violent behavior” who “is not otherwise disqualified from obtaining a Minnesota” license. Minnesota never argued he’s dangerous. It argued he hasn’t filled out its paperwork.
How Minnesota’s law works: Minn. Stat. § 624.714, subd. 16 tells the Commissioner of Public Safety to “annually establish and publish a list of other states that have laws governing the issuance of permits to carry weapons that are not similar to this section.” So it’s an exclusion list. Every state’s permit counts unless the Commissioner writes that state down.
The statute supplies no standard beyond that one phrase, “not similar,” and no criteria for applying it. The current list names 15 states, Florida and Georgia among them.
Florida makes applicants demonstrate competence with a firearm. Georgia requires no training at all. Both landed on the list anyway, which tells you it isn’t tracking how hard a permit is to earn.
§ 97B.045 is where a list becomes a physical act. A firearm in a vehicle has to be “unloaded and in a gun case expressly made to contain a firearm, and the case fully encloses the firearm by being zipped, snapped, buckled, tied, or otherwise fastened,” unless it’s unloaded in a closed trunk or carried under a permit Minnesota recognizes.
Johnson holds none, so the law “forces him, under threat of criminal penalties, to disarm, unload his firearm, and secure it in a container.” Our best gun safes guide calls that kind of gear a travel lockbox. In Minnesota it’s the cost of driving through.
What the Eighth Circuit held: In No. 25-3036, decided May 26, 2026, Judge Grasz wrote that “Johnson’s Second Amendment challenge fails at Bruen step one because Minnesota’s reciprocity statute, standing alone, does not regulate arms-bearing conduct.” The panel noted that “Johnson repeatedly concedes that Minnesota’s shall-issue permitting requirement does not violate the Second Amendment,” which is the concession the whole ruling turns on.
Read that twice. The court didn’t say refusing to honor Florida’s permit is constitutional. It said the refusal never gets examined at all, because the reciprocity statute by itself stops nobody from carrying.
So the burden is real, nobody disputes it, and it’s been split into two halves that no court will look at: the permit half because Johnson conceded it, and the reciprocity half because it “does not regulate arms-bearing conduct.” Two statutes disarm a citizen together, and a federal appeals court has held that neither one can be judged alone. That isn’t analysis. It’s a method for never reaching the question.
In the cab of the truck: A man with two valid permits pulls over short of the Minnesota line, takes his carry gun off his hip, drops the magazine, clears the chamber, and fastens it inside a case. He drives across Minnesota unarmed and reverses the ritual on the far side.
Same man, same truck, same handgun. The only thing that changed is which state’s asphalt is under his tires.
Eva Marie Gardner, a Virginia permit holder, asked the same question about Maryland, which honors no other state’s permit, in No. 25-5961. The Court denied cert on April 20, 2026, denied rehearing on June 1, and she’s still disarmed at the Maryland line.
The strongest case for Minnesota: It’s a real argument. In Bruen, footnote 9, the majority wrote: “To be clear, nothing in our analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States’ ‘shall-issue’ licensing regimes.” Minnesota is shall-issue, and Johnson concedes that requirement is constitutional, so the state’s answer writes itself: nobody’s stopping you from carrying here, go get our permit like everyone else.
Here’s the answer to it. Bruen blessed licensing, but it didn’t bless charging the same citizen the same toll in every state he passes through, and the phrase the Court keeps quoting, “law-abiding, responsible citizens,” comes out of Heller and describes a person, not a jurisdiction. The question isn’t whether a state may check that Johnson is law-abiding. It’s whether every state he drives through gets to make him prove it again.
Ryan Morrison, Senior Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, put the same point in its press release: “Once a person proves he is a law-abiding citizen, he is entitled to carry a gun in public for self-defense. Constitutional rights, the Second Amendment included, do not require someone to prove their worthiness to exercise their civil liberties over and over again.”
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The odds: Long. The Court turned Gardner away five months ago, and it denies the overwhelming majority of the petitions it receives. Johnson’s edge is that the Eighth Circuit handed the Justices a clean holding that puts reciprocity statutes outside the Second Amendment’s text entirely, the kind of rule four Justices might want to correct before other circuits copy it.
We’d bet against a grant. We’d like to be wrong.
The takeaway: Two states licensed Jeffrey Johnson to carry, and nobody disputes he’d qualify in Minnesota too. The Eighth Circuit has held that the law forcing him to unload and case his gun at the state line can’t be challenged, because the half that does the work is the half he isn’t allowed to contest. That’s not a ruling about concealed carry reciprocity. It’s a ruling that reciprocity can’t be ruled on, and only the Supreme Court can say otherwise.
Minnesota’s response is due September 28, 2026. Nothing moves until the state answers.
Should your home-state permit be good in all 50 states, or is “go get our permit” a fair answer? Let us know in the comments.
Crossing state lines starts with a carry gun you’ll wear all day. Here’s our Glock 43X review.
Sources: the Supreme Court docket in Johnson v. Jacobson, No. 26-255 and in Gardner v. Maryland, No. 25-5961; the petition for certiorari; the Eighth Circuit’s opinion in No. 25-3036; Minn. Stat. § 624.714 and § 97B.045; the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s permit to carry reciprocity list; and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). Featured photo: Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Justin Trump is the managing editor and owner of CAT Outdoors. The son of a Vietnam veteran, he’s a Certified Glock Armorer, an avid gun enthusiast and 2A advocate. He holds two firearm patents for the CAT M4 and Talon tools. When not managing CAT Outdoors, he enjoys spending time with his family and friends, rooting for Michigan sports teams, and serving his church.