Two Permits, Zero Recognition: Long-Haul Trucker Asks Supreme Court to Strike Down Minnesota’s Refusal to Honor His Florida and Georgia Carry Licenses

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WASHINGTON, DC — A long-haul trucker who holds carry permits from both Florida and Georgia has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his challenge to Minnesota’s refusal to recognize either one. Jeffrey Johnson, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, filed the petition in Johnson v. Jacobson on Tuesday, September 8, 2026.

Johnson hauls cargo across the country and makes regular trips to or through Minnesota, as reported by Reason. According to his petition, he always carries a handgun for self-defense because of the dangers that come with the job, but Minnesota does not grant reciprocity to permits from fifteen states, Florida and Georgia among them. So every time his route reaches the Minnesota line, state law requires him to unload the gun and secure it in a container.

Permit recognition works a few different ways in this country. Some states sign formal agreements with each other. Some honor out-of-state permits on their own, no agreement required. Some honor a select list and refuse everyone else. My concealed carry reciprocity maps show how that shakes out state by state, and my Minnesota concealed carry page covers what that state expects of anyone carrying inside its borders. For a driver whose work crosses state lines constantly, that patchwork decides where he is armed and where he is not.

Florida and Georgia both allow legal gun owners to carry without a license, but they still issue permits for residents who want to carry in states that demand one. A Florida concealed weapon license requires an applicant to be at least 21 (18 for honorably discharged veterans), have no disqualifying criminal or psychiatric record, not be under a domestic violence restraining order, and demonstrate competency with a firearm. Georgia’s requirements are similar. Johnson cleared both. Minnesota’s position is that none of it counts once he crosses in.

“Once a person proves he is a law-abiding citizen, he is entitled to carry a gun in public for self-defense,” said LJC Senior Counsel Ryan Morrison. “Constitutional rights, the Second Amendment included, do not require someone to prove their worthiness to exercise their civil liberties over and over again. Forcing someone to carry a Rolodex of firearm licenses to maintain his constitutional rights across the nation reduces the Second Amendment to second-class status and subjects it to an entirely different body of rules than the other rights secured by the Constitution.”

The legal argument runs straight through Bruen. In 2022 the Court held that New York’s “proper cause” requirement violated the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense. It also set the test: when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers someone’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects it, and the government has to show its regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Johnson’s petition asks the Court to apply that to a man who has already been vetted twice.

Bruen also handed states language they can point to. The Court said nothing in its analysis should be read to suggest that licensing regimes “designed to ensure only that those bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens’” are unconstitutional. Minnesota can call its permit exactly that. The question the petition puts to the justices is whether a state may demand that a citizen prove the same thing a second, third, or fifteenth time, depending on where the road takes him.

This is not the only reciprocity fight sitting at the Court’s door. In December 2025, the Second Amendment Foundation, the National Rifle Association, and several partners filed amicus briefs, friend-of-the-court filings from groups that are not parties to the case, urging the justices to grant certiorari, meaning agree to hear the case, in Gardner v. Maryland. That case involves Eva Marie Gardner, a Virginia permit holder arrested for carrying without a permit after defending herself in Maryland, a state that honors no other state’s permit. “History shows that travelers from other states were not only allowed to carry firearms but often received special exemptions from local restrictions,” SAF’s Kostas Moros said of that case. NRA-ILA announced its own filing the same day. Gun Owners of America has worked the problem from a different angle, winning lawsuits in New York and California that ended those states’ denials of nonresident carry permit applications. Johnson is asking for something simpler and broader: recognition of the permits he already holds.

A petition is a request, not a ruling. The Court has not decided whether to hear the case, most petitions are turned away, and Minnesota will have its chance to respond before the justices decide anything.

Johnson is doing what a responsible carrier has to do right now. He knows Minnesota’s rule, and he disarms at the line rather than risk a charge. That is the carry mindset working the way it should, and it is also the whole problem. A vetted, twice-licensed American rides unarmed through the stretch of his route where a state has decided his credentials mean nothing. Bruen said the right to carry in public belongs to law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs. It did not say how many times they can be made to prove it. This petition, with Gardner alongside it, asks the justices to answer that.

I will continue tracking Johnson v. Jacobson as the Court decides whether to take it up.