The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear arguments in Missouri’s effort to declare itself a “gun sanctuary” where federal firearms restrictions do not apply.

That was one of dozens of cases the high court refused to add to its docket on the first day of its new term.

The justices also rejected a dispute over the Trump administration’s approval of a copper mine on religious American Indian land in Arizona, a First Amendment free press challenge to Oregon’s law barring the secret recording of private conversations and a case out of Iowa over when a drug-sniffing dog can be used to check the inside of a suspect’s car.

The Missouri case involved a state law passed in 2021 that claimed power for itself to judge the constitutionality of federal laws under the 10th Amendment. It specifically said laws limiting the gun rights of “law-abiding citizens” were “invalid” in the state.

The law would have prevented the state and its local law enforcement from coordinating with federal officials to enforce gun laws.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that federal law trumps the state.

The idea of Second Amendment sanctuaries grew during the Biden administration as Republican-led states sought to harness lessons from the immigration sanctuary movement and use them for conservative causes.

Gun Owners of America in 2023 said Wyoming and Idaho had similar wide-ranging sanctuary policies that sought to protect state residents from federal laws.

Also on Monday, the justices turned down a challenge to Oregon’s law barring the recording of conversations without the consent of all parties.

Project Veritas, a conservative outfit that uses undercover recordings to expose government actions, said the law makes its brand of journalism difficult to carry out. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had agreed, but the full circuit reversed that ruling and upheld Oregon’s law.

In another case, the justices rejected a request to rethink their earlier denial of a case over land sacred to the Western Apaches that has been approved for a copper mine near Superior, Arizona.

The tribe has used the land for religious ceremonies for centuries. But the federal government in 2014 approved a transfer of the land to Resolution Copper, an entity created by Rio Tinto and BHP, two multinational companies.

President Trump, at the end of his first term, gave final approval to the land transfer, but the mine has been snared by lawsuits.

The high court denied the rehearing request without comment. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said he would have agreed to hear the case.

The justices also rebuffed a Fourth Amendment search case out of Iowa, where a woman said police wrongly allowed a dog to sniff the interior of her vehicle. The car was legally stopped, but the dog didn’t detect anything from the outside.

The woman said the search should have ended there, but the Iowa Supreme Court said the dog was allowed to check the inside of the vehicle, based on the initial stop.

The justices also rejected a request over legal fees from a Kentucky church that won its COVID-19 challenge in lower courts.

Maryville Baptist Church in Louisville had asked the high court to decide if the church’s due process rights were violated in the denial of repayment for legal expenses in its injunction lawsuit. A group of congregants who filed a separate lawsuit over the worship ban was granted compensation for legal costs, but not the church.

And the justices turned away a case brought by conservative activist Laura Loomer, who argued that social media platforms were engaged in a conspiracy to silence speech, which she says impacted her unsuccessful congressional campaign.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.