Who was behind the District of Columbia v. Heller case?
CATO board member and wealthy libertarian Robert Levy recruited six plaintiffs for a lawsuit challenging D.C.’s gun laws in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2003. The District Court dismissed the case—at that time known as Parker v. District of Columbia—but an appellate panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed the decision and found that D.C.’s gun laws violated the Second Amendment. In that ruling, D.C. resident Dick Anthony Heller was the only plaintiff whose case was found to have standing because he had applied for a permit to own a handgun and was denied.
