When The Government Loses In Court, It Should Not Get Unlimited Do-Overs

Imagine that the federal government prohibits you from exercising a constitutional right. Your neighbor challenges the prohibition and wins; a federal court holds that the government may not enforce it.

Now imagine that you want to engage in the very same conduct as your neighbor, inside the same judicial district where the government’s prohibition was just enjoined. The government would rely on the same law and the same legal arguments to prevent you from doing so.

You might reasonably think the government has already had its chance in court and lost — and that the matter has therefore been resolved in your favor.

Under current Supreme Court precedent, however, the federal government gets another chance. In fact, it gets a new chance each and every time someone wants to vindicate the same right under the same unconstitutional law.

Our firm, the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for the American Future, represents two Texans, David McCann and Kirk Launius, in a case challenging that extraordinary privilege.

The underlying dispute involves whether law-abiding citizens may carry otherwise lawful firearms with them when they visit a post office. Federal law and Postal Service regulations prohibit carrying firearms on postal property, including by people lawfully carrying them for self-defense — a recognized constitutional right.

In 2025, several plaintiffs challenged those restrictions in the Northern District of Texas. They succeeded, and a federal judge held that the government could not enforce the restrictions upon ordinary, lawful firearm possession at post offices.

Regardless of what one thinks about the specific ruling on firearms, the matter exposed a broader unfair procedural problem. Under current case law, that judgment only protected those specific plaintiffs who brought that specific lawsuit. Even though the Northern District of Texas had stated and applied its opinion on the unconstitutionality of the restrictions, others in the same district still faced the same prohibitions.

Regardless of what one thinks of the specific firearms ruling, the case exposed a broader procedural problem. Under current case law, the judgment protected only the plaintiffs who brought that particular lawsuit. So even after the Northern District of Texas held the challenged rules unconstitutional, others in the very same district still faced the same restrictions.