Imagine the government ordering you to install cameras and microphones in your home office. They must run day and night, recording conversations with clients, coworkers, and family. And you must save the recordings for at least a year in case the government wants to review them. Astonishingly, this is exactly what California is requiring some home-based, firearms businesses to do. Now, the Goldwater Institute is urging the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to end this unprecedented invasion of privacy.
Goldwater filed an amicus brief urging the full Ninth Circuit to rehear Richards v. Newsom and to reverse an August ruling by a three-judge panel. The panel upheld a decision dismissing a challenge to a California law that requires firearms dealers to install continuously-running cameras and microphones in designated business areas—a violation of both the First and Fourth amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
The law doesn’t just target suspected wrongdoers—it’s aimed broadly at firearms businesses that have a license to operate in the state.
The challenge comes from California attorney and small-business owner Adam Richards, who operates a federally licensed firearms business from a detached office on his residential property. He also uses that office for roughly half his legal practice, including confidential phone calls with clients. His family visits him there, too. Yet California law requires firearms dealers—even home-based dealers like Richards—to record video and sound continuously in designated business areas, even after business hours, and preserve the recordings for at least a year.
Of course, a microphone can’t tell a firearms sale from a confidential legal consultation—or a conversation with a loved one. It records them all the same.
The reasoning of the three-judge panel that dismissed Richard’s challenge was troubling: No Fourth Amendment search occurs when the government only requires the recordings, the panel concluded, because officials haven’t physically entered the premises or accessed the footage yet.
This modern surveillance regime doesn’t require an officer standing in your doorway. California forces business owners to turn fleeting conversations into durable records of people’s voices, faces, and visits—records created for potential government inspection. That an inspection might not happen in every case does not erase the intrusion of forcing people to create it.
The constitutional injury begins when the state orders the cameras and microphones turned on—not merely when a bureaucrat presses play.
California’s law violates the First Amendment, too, because it chills speech in affected private homes and businesses. People may think twice before discussing politics, their constitutional rights, or sensitive personal matters if they know every word is being saved. One plaintiff alleges that the recording requirement has already curtailed his participation in discussions about legislation, litigation, and constitutional rights. Telling people they can avoid recording by remaining silent misses the point: silence is the harm.
Judge Kenneth Lee, dissenting from the panel’s decision, underscored how extraordinary California’s law is: “Neither the federal government nor the other 49 states have ever enacted such an intrusive audio-recording requirement for any business activity.”
This is not just about having a security camera directed at a sales counter but an always-on microphone capturing unrelated conversations, even after hours. The Ninth Circuit has previously recognized this distinction, limiting inspections of home-based day-care operations to the places and times associated with the regulated business.
California’s approach will not stop with firearms dealers. Their argument is that the individuals involved consent to the recording simply by choosing to enter into a licensed business. But California requires licenses for at least 177 different occupations.
If operating a business under a license allows the government to demand round-the-clock recordings, what’s to prevent a similar requirement for a home baker whose kitchen is also where her family eats and talks? The logic could reach countless Americans who work where they live.
Goldwater has long defended the right to earn a living at home without forfeiting constitutional protections. The Bill of Rights has no business-license exception. The full Ninth Circuit should hear this case and reaffirm a basic promise of American liberty: Your home doesn’t stop being private just because you do business there.
Click here to read the Goldwater Institute’s brief.
Tony Napolitano is a Senior Attorney at the Goldwater Institute.
