In August 2023, the police chief of Holyoke, Massachusetts declined to renew a man's license to carry, finding him "unsuitable" under a state law that lets licensing authorities deny permits to applicants who "may create a risk to public safety." The man, Randy Westbrook, challenged the denial in court. Next month, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear the case that grew out of that decision, and the question is not whether the chief applied the standard correctly. It is whether the standard can exist at all.
Pratt v. Westbrook, docketed as SJC-13822, is set for argument on October 7 in Springfield. The case has already produced two opposing rulings from lower courts, a full round of briefing, and amicus filings from national gun-rights organizations. It arrives at the state's highest court in the shadow of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 Bruen decision, which reshaped the constitutional law of gun licensing, and of the SJC's own 2025 rulings that upheld Massachusetts' suitability regime.
What the Chief Decided, and Why
The denial rests on conduct from more than a decade ago. According to court records and the trade press coverage of the case, Westbrook faced criminal charges in 2010 and 2014, including an alleged 2010 domestic assault and battery and alleged 2014 drug charges. None of the charges produced convictions: they were resolved through continuances without findings or dismissed. The specifics of the charges rest on advocacy reporting and court filings, and the parties describe them differently.
A continuance without a finding is a Massachusetts disposition with no clean national equivalent. The defendant is not convicted; the case is continued for a set period and dismissed if the conditions hold. The result is a court record that shows a charge but no conviction, which is precisely the kind of record that poses hard questions for a licensing standard built on judgment. Westbrook's counsel argues the record should count for almost nothing. The licensing authority argues it counts as reliable information about suitability.
Chief David Pratt concluded the history made Westbrook unsuitable under G.L. c. 140, section 131(d), which directs licensing authorities to consider "reliable, articulable and credible information" bearing on whether an applicant may create a risk to public safety. In court, the chief reportedly testified that the determination rested on his professional judgment accumulated over decades in policing, not on a written scoring system.
The district court judge who first heard the case sided with Westbrook. In May 2024, Judge William P. Hadley ruled the suitability standard unconstitutional under Bruen and ordered the license issued. A year later, Superior Court Judge Deepika B. Shukla reversed, holding that Bruen "does not prohibit licensing authorities from exercising any amount of discretion at all." The Supreme Judicial Court then took the case directly, granting an application for direct appellate review in September 2025. Direct appellate review is itself a signal: the SJC grants it when a question is significant enough to skip the intermediate Appeals Court. Briefing completed over the spring and summer, and the court set argument for October 7, with amicus filings from a national coalition of gun-rights organizations.
The Challengers' Argument
Westbrook's position, supported by amicus briefs from the Second Amendment Foundation and allied organizations, is that the suitability standard is exactly the kind of discretion Bruen condemned. The 2022 decision's footnote nine says a licensing scheme fails when it requires officials to exercise "appraisal of facts, exercise of judgment, and formation of an opinion" rather than checking objective criteria. The SAF's amicus brief describes Massachusetts' standard, as quoted in its announcement, as "textbook subjective discretion."
The challengers also make a timing argument drawn from the Court's Rahimi decision. Temporary disarmament tied to current dangerousness is one thing, the argument runs; a permanent denial based on charges from sixteen and twelve years ago, none of which became convictions, is another. Westbrook's last alleged act of violence predates the denial by more than a decade, and the challengers ask how a prediction built on 2010 conduct can justify a permanent denial in 2026, and why a standard that requires no fresh evidence should satisfy any constitutional test. And they point to the chief's own testimony as proof of the problem: if a constitutional right depends on the "experience, philosophy, instincts or risk tolerance" of whichever official happens to decide, then similarly situated applicants get different rights in different cities.
The State's Argument
Massachusetts defends the standard on three grounds. First, it argues Bruen did not eliminate suitability regimes; the decision targeted may-issue systems that demanded a special need to carry, while suitability rules were part of the historical tradition Bruen itself recognized. The Superior Court adopted this reasoning, citing the Second Circuit's Antonyuk decision for the proposition that states may deny based on character and temperament even when they may not demand a showing of need.
Second, the state points to the SJC's own recent precedent. In 2025, the court decided Commonwealth v. Marquis and Commonwealth v. Donnell, upholding the suitability requirement for firearms licenses, including for nonresidents. Those rulings described the criteria as "narrow, objective, and definite" standards fitting within the historical tradition of surety and going-armed laws. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Marquis in January. The state's argument runs even further back: in Chief of Police of Worcester v. Holden, the SJC held decades ago that criminal or violent conduct, with or without a conviction, can support a suitability denial, and the Superior Court relied on Holden in reversing the district judge.
Third, the state emphasizes process. A denial is not the last word: applicants get a de novo evidentiary hearing before a judge, which is the safeguard against arbitrary decisions. The chief's judgment is the first pass, not the final one. The hearing cuts both ways as an argument, though. It is the state's proof that discretion is bounded, because a denial is reviewable from scratch by a judge. The challengers reply that review after the fact does not cure a standard that invites arbitrary decisions in the first instance, and that the cost and delay of litigation is itself a burden on the right. The SJC will have to decide whether process can rescue a standard that, on its face, asks officials to predict risk.
The amicus lineup signals the stakes. The Second Amendment Foundation, the California Rifle and Pistol Association, the Second Amendment Law Center, the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms joined a brief supporting Westbrook in September. Massachusetts' Gun Owners' Action League has backed the case from the start, and the national organizations' presence marks it as a potential vehicle for the broader post-Bruen fight.
What the SJC Will Decide
The legal question, as the court framed it in its amicus solicitation, is whether the district judge was right that the then-applicable version of section 131(d) violated the Second and Fourteenth Amendments. The challenge is facial and as-applied: the statute is unconstitutional in general, and unconstitutional as applied to Westbrook in particular.
The court's options are broader than affirm or reverse. It could uphold the standard but impose objective criteria on how chiefs apply it. It could hold the standard valid as written but applied improperly here. It could follow Marquis, in which case the dispute collapses into the as-applied facts. Or it could conclude that after Bruen, a standard built around a prediction of risk from a police chief's professional judgment cannot be squared with a constitutional right, whatever the state's history. The argument next month will reveal which path the justices are considering.
Whatever the court decides, the answer will reach beyond Holyoke. Massachusetts issues licenses through hundreds of local authorities, and suitability findings vary with the chief. A ruling that imposes objective criteria would standardize that discretion statewide; a ruling that upholds the standard as written would confirm that local judgment is the system working as intended. Marquis suggests the court's instinct is to preserve the standard while policing its edges. The challengers' whole case is that after Bruen, the edges are the standard.
The timing runs out past the argument. A decision is unlikely before late this year or early next, and whichever side loses will have a Supreme Court petition to consider. The Bruen footnote the challengers invoke has never been applied by the Justices to a suitability standard like Massachusetts'. Pratt v. Westbrook is positioned to be the case that asks them to.
This article takes no position on the merits. The case matters because both sides are right about what is at stake: a licensing system that gives officials discretion over who carries firearms, and a claimed right that varies by city if that discretion stands. Massachusetts has had suitability on the books for decades. The SJC will decide whether it still fits the constitutional frame the U.S. Supreme Court built in 2022.
Primary sources
- Massachusetts Appeals Court docket, Pratt v. Westbrook, SJC-13822, for the case history and the October 7 argument date.
- Massachusetts Attorney General's amicus solicitation, DAR-30510, for the court's framing of the question presented.
- Westbrook v. Pratt, Holyoke District Court decision (2024), for the lower court's Bruen analysis.
- Second Amendment Foundation amicus brief and announcement, for the challengers' arguments as their advocates state them.
- Mass. Lawyers Weekly coverage, for the Superior Court reversal and the procedural history.
- Commonwealth v. Marquis / Commonwealth v. Donnell (SJC 2025), for the state's governing precedent.