NEWTOWN, Conn. – The National Shooting Sports Foundation® (NSSF®) announced today that it and co-plaintiff City Arms East, LLC have reached an agreement with the City of Pleasant Hill, California, to end a lawsuit challenging a 2013 ordinance that sought to impose burdensome and unlawful firearms and ammunition sales restrictions on local firearms retailers.
As a result of the settlement approved by the city council on Monday night, the City of Pleasant Hill will pay $400,000 to cover legal fees incurred by NSSF and City Arms in bringing the suit.
“We were successful in our goal to protect the ability of federally-licensed firearms retailers to open, operate and grow their businesses in the City of Pleasant Hill,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel. “As we predicted when the city council made its unfortunate decision to go forward with an ordinance, which only put into place duplicative, unneeded regulation and did nothing to enhance public safety, it was very likely that taxpayers would be left paying the tab for what amounts to an unwarranted political decision to target law-abiding businesses.”
In the process of passing the ordinance, the plaintiffs in their suit were able to provide concrete instances of Pleasant Hill’s own missteps and “hide the ball” tactics that the city’s own planning commission had opposed. To avoid a trial and reach a settlement, the city modified those aspects of its regulations that NSSF and City Arms argued were in violation of state law and the United States Constitution.
Craig Livingston of Livingston Law Firm in Walnut Creek represented NSSF in the action.
