Cameras and Microphones in a Home Office, Recordings Kept for a Year: Goldwater Asks Full Ninth Circuit to Rehear California Gun Dealer Surveillance Case

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The Goldwater Institute filed an amicus brief on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2026, asking the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear Richards v. Newsom and throw out a three-judge panel decision that upheld California’s requirement that licensed firearms dealers, home-based dealers included, keep cameras and microphones running in their business areas and preserve the recordings for the state. An amicus brief is a friend-of-the-court filing from someone who is not a party to the case. Goldwater’s brief supports the appellants’ petition for rehearing en banc, which is a request that the entire court take up the case instead of the three judges who already ruled.

The plaintiff at the center of the case is Adam Richards, a California attorney and small-business owner who runs a federally licensed firearms business from a detached office on his residential property. He also uses that office for roughly half of his legal practice, including confidential phone calls with clients, and his family visits him there, as reported by the Goldwater Institute in its announcement of the filing. California requires him to record video and audio continuously in designated business areas, even after business hours, and keep the recordings for at least a year. A microphone cannot tell a firearm sale from a privileged legal consultation or a conversation with his kids. It captures all of it.

The law at issue is California Penal Code section 26806. According to SAF’s announcement, the challenge was filed in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by the Second Amendment Foundation, the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners of California, the Gun Owners Foundation, On Target Indoor Shooting Range, Gaalswyk Enterprises, and three private citizens, naming Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta as defendants. Judge James V. Selna dismissed the case. GOA, GOF, and GOC, joined by several affected dealers, filed their opening brief at the Ninth Circuit in May 2025, per GOA, describing a law that forces every FFL to install 24/7 video and audio recording and retain the data for warrantless inspection by the state. In August, a three-judge panel upheld the dismissal.

Goldwater’s brief, filed by attorney Anthony Napolitano of the institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation, makes three arguments. First, the privacy problem. A year-long archive of audio and video is a far bigger intrusion than a rule telling a store to hang security cameras, and under the technology-neutral principle from the Kyllo decision, the state does not get a pass just because it watches and listens remotely instead of standing in the room. Second, the speech problem. The panel said there is no First Amendment harm until the state actually discloses a recording or retaliates over one. Goldwater says that gets it backward. Being recorded changes what people are willing to say, courts are supposed to weigh that burden now instead of waiting for retaliation, and a sign on the wall warning that the room is recorded does not justify the state forcing the recording to exist in the first place. Third, the license problem. The panel reasoned that holding a license is enough to justify the surveillance, and Goldwater says that logic wipes out privacy in any home or office that doubles as a licensed business. Richards’ office, where the cameras capture his legal work and his family along with his gun sales, is the brief’s proof.

Goldwater is not alone in asking for a second look. The NRA filed its own amicus brief on Oct. 23 urging the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc, according to NRA-ILA. And the argument the plaintiffs have made from the start has not changed. “This law requires what is quite literally a 21st century Orwellian telescreen,” GOA Senior Vice President Erich Pratt said when the appeal was filed. “California forces gun dealers to record private conversations, including within their own homes, and then hand them over to the government without a warrant.”

The part of this that bothers me most is the license-based reasoning. If holding an FFL is enough to justify a year of audio and video from a man’s home office, there is no obvious stopping point for any other licensed activity conducted at home. The mindset I bring to every California story is that the state treats the exercise of a right as a reason for more scrutiny, not less, and if you buy, sell, or carry in California, every conversation at a dealer’s counter is now a recording the state can ask for, whether or not anyone suspects you of anything.

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The petition for rehearing is pending. The full Ninth Circuit decides whether to take the case, and the state will have its chance to argue the panel got it right.

I will continue tracking Richards v. Newsom as the Ninth Circuit decides whether to rehear it.

Read the original story: Cameras and Microphones in a Home Office, Recordings Kept for a Year: Goldwater Asks Full Ninth Circuit to Rehear California Gun Dealer Surveillance Case