The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to assault weapons bans in New York and Connecticut on Monday.
The eight justices declined to hear two separate appeals brought by gun rights advocates, leaving in place earlier rulings that said the laws were compliant with the Second Amendment, Reuters reported.
The court rejected the challenges without comment.
Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub on June 12, used a semiautomatic rifle that would have been outlawed in New York and Connecticut.
The laws in both states were passed after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, that killed 20 children and six educators in 2012.
The ban in Connecticut criminalized more than 100 types of firearms along with high-capacity magazines that can hold more 10 rounds of ammunition, USA Today reported. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo enacted a similar law in New York, though its ban doesn’t list specific names of firearms.
"The category of firearms Connecticut bans are united by nothing other than the possession of safety-enhancing features that serve to make them more reliable and better suited to home defense," the challengers argued in a brief.
Five other states—California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Hawaii—and Washington, D.C., also have bans on some semiautomatic rifles.
In the wake of the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., that left 14 dead, the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to an assault weapons ban in a Chicago suburb.
The court has not ruled on a major firearms case since the McDonald v. City of Chicago in 2010, which protected an individual’s right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense.
The Senate will vote on four gun control measures Monday, though all are expected to fail.