Four major Second Amendment organizations sued New Mexico on Monday, accusing Democratic state officials of defying a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the state’s gun-purchase waiting period as unconstitutional.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the New Mexico Shooting Sports Association filed a complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. They target continued enforcement of the waiting-period law known as HB129 after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit already rejected it.
The fight turns on a simple legal question with statewide stakes: whether a ruling that a law is “obviously unconstitutional” binds only the two people who brought the first case, or whether the state must stop applying that law to everyone else.
In August 2025, the Tenth Circuit struck down New Mexico’s waiting period on firearms purchases. The appeals court overruled a decision that had favored the state from Senior U.S. District Judge James O. Browning, a George W. Bush appointee.
The litigation that produced that result is known as the Ortega case. Its named plaintiffs were two individuals, Paul Ortega and Rebecca Scott. An Aug. 28 grant of summary judgment sits at the center of the new dispute.
The new complaint says New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez, a Democrat, has moved to limit the force of that judgment. The groups charge that the state is treating a constitutional holding as a private pass for two people rather than a rule that ends the waiting period for lawful buyers who clear a federal background check.
The Daily Caller reported the filing and the groups’ claim that the state is working around the appeals court’s decision instead of complying with it.
New Mexico officials have drawn a narrow line. After the district-court summary judgment posture, they said the relief ran only to Ortega and Scott.
Michael Coleman, communications director for Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, spelled out that position to Source NM.
"The order only states that the two named plaintiffs are able to purchase firearms without having to go through the waiting period. The law remains in effect otherwise,"
That statement frames the waiting period as still operative for the rest of the state. The plaintiffs call that stance a refusal to accept the Tenth Circuit’s holding.
The groups do not ask for vague policy talk. They ask a court to say again that HB129 is unconstitutional for firearms sales to people who pass the background check required under federal law, and to block the state from enforcing the delay against the organizations, their customers, and their members.
The complaint puts the dispute in blunt terms.
"Unfortunately, New Mexico does not seem to get the message,"
It continues with the core charge about selective compliance.
"Because the only plaintiffs in the Ortega case were two individuals, the New Mexico Department of Justice has taken the position that it may continue applying to everyone else in New Mexico a law that the Tenth Circuit has declared ‘obviously unconstitutional.’"
Later the filing states the groups’ view of the state’s posture and the relief they want.
"New Mexico has made clear that it will not abide the Tenth Circuit’s ‘holding’ unless and until a court makes it do so,"
The next passage lays out the requested order.
"So Plaintiffs seek an order that once again declares HB129 unconstitutional in the context of firearms sales to individuals who pass the background check required under federal law and that enjoins New Mexico from enforcing the law against them, their customers, and their members."
In plain terms, the plaintiffs want a clear declaration and an injunction so the seven-day delay cannot keep running against their members and customers after a federal background check is complete.
The waiting period at issue is a seven-day hold. On October 20, 2026, NSSF posted on X that it was challenging New Mexico’s “Rights Delayed” seven-day waiting period after the governor, in the group’s words, ignored court rulings declaring the measure unconstitutional. That post is advocacy framing from a plaintiff organization, not a court finding.
The legal clash is concrete. One side says a federal appeals court already labeled the law obviously unconstitutional. The other side says the operative order frees only two named buyers and leaves the statute standing for everyone else. A court will have to resolve that gap.
The New Mexico case does not stand alone. A separate track out of Maine has produced a circuit split on waiting-period rules.
U.S. District Judge Lance E. Walker, a Trump appointee in the District of Maine, struck down Maine’s 72-hour waiting period. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit later overturned that decision. Attorneys for Andrea Beckwith then filed a petition on Aug. 25 asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up her case.
The Daily Caller account notes that the split across circuits raises the odds that the justices could eventually confront the waiting-period question. No public decision from the Supreme Court on that petition is described in the available materials.
The waiting-period fight also sits against a recent state record of aggressive gun controls. In September 2023, Gov. Grisham issued an order that banned carrying firearms in parks and playgrounds in Albuquerque, citing public health reasons. That order is background context for how the administration has used executive and statutory tools around firearms. It is separate from HB129 and the Tenth Circuit waiting-period ruling.
Investigators of the court record, meaning the judges who take up the new complaint, will need to determine the proper scope of the Tenth Circuit’s holding and the Aug. 28 summary judgment grant. They will need to decide whether New Mexico may keep enforcing HB129 against buyers who are not Paul Ortega or Rebecca Scott.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed in the materials at hand any immediate statewide halt to the seven-day delay for all purchasers. No public results have been released in those materials about a new docket number, the precise trial court for the fresh filing, or any count of how many buyers face the delay while the dispute continues.
The complaint names the enforcement posture of Attorney General Torrez and the New Mexico Department of Justice as the problem to be enjoined. Torrez is not quoted directly in the seed reporting. The state’s clearest public line remains Coleman’s statement that the law stays in effect beyond the two named plaintiffs.
Declaratory relief is a court statement of what the law is. Injunctive relief is a court order telling the state to stop enforcing a measure against protected parties. The plaintiffs want both, aimed at HB129 as applied to people who already pass the federal background check.
That posture matters for dealers, members of the plaintiff groups, and ordinary buyers who clear NICS-style checks and still face a seven-day clock. It also matters for federalism and appellate hierarchy. When a circuit court calls a statute obviously unconstitutional, states do not get to shrink the holding into a two-person exemption without further litigation testing that move.
The groups argue New Mexico is forcing them to litigate the same constitutional defect again because officials will not treat the Tenth Circuit result as controlling beyond Ortega and Scott. The state, through Coleman, argues the order’s text reaches only those two plaintiffs. Both positions appear in the same report. Neither side’s claim is resolved as fact beyond what the courts have already written and what the new complaint asks a court to draft next.
Timeline markers in the record run from Grisham’s September 2023 Albuquerque parks and playgrounds carry ban, to the Tenth Circuit’s August 2025 rejection of the waiting period, to the Aug. 28 summary judgment reference, to the Beckwith Supreme Court petition on Aug. 25 in the Maine line of cases, to Monday’s multi-group filing against New Mexico.
Each step tightens the same theme. State officials push delay rules and place-based limits. Gun-rights plaintiffs answer in federal court. Appeals courts split. The Supreme Court sits as a possible next forum on the wider waiting-period question even as New Mexico faces a fresh demand for statewide relief on HB129.
For now the operative conflict inside New Mexico is institutional. A federal appeals court spoke. The state says the practical effect is tiny. The industry and rights groups say that reading guts the holding and keeps an invalidated delay in force.
Courts exist to end that kind of standoff with orders that officials must follow. When a state treats a constitutional ruling like a private waiver for two litigants, the next lawsuit is not culture-war theater. It is the price of making the hierarchy of federal law mean something in practice.
