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Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s bid for Supreme Court confirmation got a major boost Tuesday from two unexpected sources. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals—led by arch conservatives Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook—declared in a 3-0 panel decision that the Second Amendment does not apply to state gun regulations, even in the wake of the big gun-rights victory at the Supreme Court last spring. It’s a strong legal position that is the same as the one Judge Sotomayor took when the same issue was presented to her and her 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals colleagues a few months back.

The 7th Circuit ruling gives nominee Sotomayor grand legal cover as she wends her way through the corridors of the Senate on her way to a confirmation hearing (in September, I bet, not in July). If she is pressed for her views on gun rights by conservative senators, or if the National Rifle Association tries to portray her as soft on gun-control, she can point to right-wing legal titans Posner and Easterbrook and say: “If I am wrong, then they are wrong, too” or perhaps, more appropriately, she can say: “I was right about the constitutional limits on last term’s big gun case and that’s been proven by the fact that Posner and Easterbrook followed me.”

The decision also makes it much more likely that the Supreme Court will have to accept another gun-rights case to decide whether the federal right is and ought to be incorporated down onto a state level. The Justices specifically refused to address that result in District of Columbia v. Heller (check out Footnote 23 if you don’t believe me) and declared that their existing precedent does not recognize such a right. The 2nd Circuit and now the 7th Circuit have refused to recognize such a right without express Supreme Court authority. The 9th Circuit, however, did recognize such a right. The Court now will have to broker that dispute before it gets worse (as more federal circuits chime in). And guess who is likely to be on the Court when that happens? Right. Justice Sotomayor!

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