On October 7 the Supreme Judicial Court hears a constitutional challenge to the standard that decides most contested Massachusetts license-to-carry cases. However it comes out, something useful has already happened: to defend the standard, the Commonwealth had to commit in writing to a narrow reading.
The case, and where to find it
Pratt v. Westbrook, SJC-13822, is scheduled for oral argument next Wednesday, October 7, 2026 at 9:30 a.m. It is worth noting where: the Court is sitting that day at Hampden County Superior Court in Springfield, not at the John Adams Courthouse in Boston.
The posture matters for reading the briefs. An applicant was denied a license to carry on unsuitability grounds. He prevailed in the District Court. A Hampden County Superior Court judge reversed that order and upheld the standard, and the applicant took the appeal. The Commonwealth intervened to defend the statute's constitutionality, which is why the substantial merits brief on the government side is the Attorney General's rather than the chief's (which is impounded).
One threshold point. The case was litigated under G.L. c. 140, § 131(d) as it stood before October 2, 2024. St. 2024, c. 135 moved the unsuitability standard into § 121F(k). The Commonwealth's brief states that the relocation left the standard itself unchanged. If that is right, and it is the Commonwealth saying so, not a court, then whatever the SJC says about the older text will govern the current one.
The facts, which are not neutral
The record before the Court is vital to the constitutional argument, because the two sides arguing will characterize it very differently and that difference can show you most of the case.
The applicant applied to the Holyoke Police Department in April 2023. The chief denied him in August 2023 on two sets of prior charges. The first arose in March 2010, when officers responding to a domestic disturbance found his then-girlfriend, nine months pregnant, hiding in a bathroom with a swollen and partially closed eye; she reported that he had shaken her and punched her in the face and head. He was charged with aggravated assault and battery on a pregnant woman and with domestic assault and battery. The second arose in April 2014, when he was a passenger in a van stopped by a state trooper; a search turned up seventeen individually packaged baggies of suspected cocaine and crack under the gas cap. He was charged with conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute.
He was convicted of nothing, in the end. But he admitted to sufficient facts on three of those charges and took continuances without a finding (CWOFs are a common disposition for criminal cases in Massachusetts). That distinction is the hinge. A CWOF is not a conviction, and the appellant's brief frames the denial as resting on decade-old charges. The Commonwealth's answer is that a CWOF entails an admission to sufficient facts to warrant a guilty finding, and that conduct not resulting in conviction may be considered on suitability, citing Chief of Police of Worcester v. Holden, 470 Mass. 845, 856 (2015).
Anyone hoping this case produces a broad ruling in favor of license-holders should sit with that for a moment. Successful facial constitutional challenges are usually brought on sympathetic facts. These are not sympathetic facts.
How it got here, and the part people miss
The striking thing about the procedural history is that the applicant won below, in the District Court. After an evidentiary hearing, the judge held that the suitability provision violates the Second Amendment, finding no historical tradition for a statute delimiting the right “in such soft, indeed spongy terms,” and objecting that it let officials disarm on “a hint, an intimation or an insinuation” of danger. That is a Massachusetts trial judge striking down a state licensing standard.
Two things then happened. The chief sought certiorari review in the Superior Court under G.L. c. 249, § 4, and the Attorney General intervened. And the legal ground moved: the District Court had ruled before both United States v. Rahimi and Marquis were decided, and both cut against it. (Rahimi is another example of how unsympathetic facts can produce adverse results.) The Superior Court vacated the decision and reinstated the denial, relying on the surety and going-armed analogues and on the point that unsuitability is not permanent because an applicant may re-apply.
So the SJC is reviewing a trial-court decision whose legal foundation shifted underneath it, on facts that do the challenger no favors.
What the applicant argues
The appellant's brief runs three lines of attack, and they are worth stating plainly because the second and third are narrower than the first.
The third is the ambitious one. Marquis is a 2025 SJC decision upholding the Commonwealth's nonresident licensing scheme against a facial Second Amendment challenge, and the US Supreme Court denied certiorari in January 2026. Asking the SJC to depart from its own recent reasoning is a heavy lift, and the Commonwealth's brief leans on Marquis as foreclosing the facial claim outright.
The part that is useful now
Here is the thing about defending a statute against a vagueness and overbreadth attack: you defend it by making it narrow. The Commonwealth's brief does that repeatedly, and because a brief is a public filing, those positions are quotable by anyone.
A quantum of proof, where the statute supplies none
The licensing statute says nothing about how convinced a chief must be. The Commonwealth filled the gap:
“[T]he default burden of proof in civil or administrative proceedings is the preponderance standard… Thus, the police chief must presumably determine that it is more likely than not that the applicant is unsuitable.”
That is an Attorney General, in writing, attaching a standard of proof to a decision the Legislature itself left unquantified. It is a litigating position and not a holding, and the word “presumably” is doing real work in it. But it is a considered position taken by the office defending the statute, and if the government argues the opposite in another case, this can be cited back at them.
The wrong legal standard requires reversal
On judicial review, the brief adopts the Appeals Court's statement of the mechanism, quoting Guinane v. Chief of Police of Manchester-by-the-Sea, 106 Mass. App. Ct. 412, 416-17 (2026):
“[F]ailure to follow proper legal standards is not only an error of law but also an abuse of discretion” that would require reversing the licensing authority's decision.
The same passage of the brief argues that review has teeth, noting that denials “are, in fact, reversed on judicial review as lacking a reasonable basis,” and citing three decisions where that happened.
Behavior, not impressions
The brief's account of what a chief may rely on for unsuitability tracks the statutory text closely: reliable, articulable and credible information that the applicant “has exhibited or engaged in behavior” suggesting a risk. It quotes Marquis for the proposition that subjective, impressionistic judgments of unsuitability are not allowed. Marquis, 495 Mass. at 452.
And on as-applied constitutional challenges, the burden is the government's
“[I]f an applicant makes an as-applied Second Amendment challenge during their licensing appeal, the burden is on the government to demonstrate that the challenged decision or regulation is consistent with the ‘Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.’”
That concession is narrower than it first looks: it addresses the constitutional question, not the statutory unsuitability question, and the same brief argues the applicant bears the burden on the latter. But it is a clean statement of who carries what on the constitutional half of a licensing appeal.
What to listen for on October 7
I would not try to read the outcome from the questioning, and anyone who tells you they can is selling something. But there are three things worth hearing.
Whether the Court engages the burden question at all. The applicant's first argument is not only that the standard is vague but that it misallocates the burden. Massachusetts decisions predating Bruen place that burden on the petitioner. No appellate court has revisited the allocation since the 2022 amendments, and the Guinane court expressly declined to decide whether those amendments reduced the discretion or deference owed to the licensing authority. Id. at 417 n.7. This case presents the question squarely.
How the Court treats charges that produced no conviction. The as-applied argument turns on charges that produced no conviction, but that produced admissions to sufficient facts. The Commonwealth's answer is that the relevant material is the underlying conduct rather than the fact of an arrest, that a CWOF rests on an admission, and that the applicant put on no evidence of rehabilitation. Where the Court draws that line will matter well beyond this case.
Whether “may create a risk” gets construed. The statute permits denial on information suggesting the applicant may create a risk. The applicant's brief argues that “may” cannot be judicially converted into “would.” If the Court says anything about how much likelihood that word requires, it will be the most consequential sentence in the opinion.
What this does not tell you
A decision is unlikely before 2027. Nothing above predicts one, and nothing above changes what a licensing authority may do tomorrow. The Commonwealth's positions are arguments, not law, but they are arguments the Commonwealth has now committed to on the record, and an applicant facing a denial that rests on impressions rather than articulated behavior, or on an arrest rather than conduct, is entitled to point that out.
If you want the underlying framework rather than the appellate fight, I have written separately on the standard itself, on the District Court hearing, and on what municipal departments actually ask applicants for.
The foregoing is based on a compilation of public filings in a pending appeal, accurate as described on the date above. Briefs are public records; the chief's brief in this case is impounded and is not described here. Nothing in this post is a prediction of the outcome.