On the same day as the latest American mass shooting, the California Supreme Court in National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc. v. State of California today upholds a state statute that requires certain pistols to have “a microscopic array of characters that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol, etched or otherwise imprinted in two or more places on the interior surface or internal working parts of the pistol, and that are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge case when the firearm is fired.”  Relying on a general statute that provides, “The law never requires impossibilities,” the plaintiffs sought to block the law, claiming dual placement microstamping technology is impossible to implement.

The court’s opinion by Justice Goodwin Liu rejects the challenge to the gun statute.  Noting there was no constitutional attack on the law and assuming compliance with the microstamping requirement is in fact impossible, the court concludes the no-impossibilities statute “is an interpretative canon for construing statutes, not a means for invalidating them.”  The court says, however, that “[i]mpossibility can occasionally excuse noncompliance with a statute.”

Justice Ming Chin writes a separate concurring opinion.  Stating a part of the majority opinion muddies the point, he stresses that “courts remain free, based on legislative intent, to construe [the microstamping statute] as inapplicable to a particular case because compliance in that case would be impossible.”

The court reverses the Fifth District Court of Appeal.