The U.S. Supreme Court declined to toss a case over a restrictive gun regulation in New York City on Monday.

In an order handed down Monday, the Supreme Court disagreed that the case immediately became moot after the city relaxed that regulation and the New York State Legislature approved a law addressing it.

While the U.S. Supreme Court refused to set the case aside, the justices according to the order are prepared to address whether the matter has been rendered moot by actions to withdraw the measures by the city government and state lawmakers.

"The respondents' suggestion of mootness is denied," the order read. "The question of mootness will be subject to further consideration at oral argument, and the parties should be prepared to discuss it."

A spokesman from the New York City Law Department, which is defending against the litigation, said the city's attorneys are looking forward to addressing the issue before the high court later this year. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Dec. 2.

While there is still an off-ramp before the justices consider the merits of the regulations, their refusal to immediately reject the matter as moot may signal that a faction of the current high court has an appetite to take a closer look at the breadth of the Second Amendment's meaning.

The lawsuit was brought more than six years ago by the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, an advocacy group in New York that's affiliated with the National Rifle Association.

The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association is represented before the Supreme Court by Paul Clement, a partner at Kirkland & Ellis in Washington, D.C.  Tom King, president of the State Rifle and Pistol Association said the case, if found in his favor, could prevent New York City from promulgating more restrictive gun regulations in the future.

"New York city's past history involving the Second Amendment and restricting of lawful gun owners' rights is legendary," King said. "I think the Supreme Court has this right and that it should look at this issue."

His group was seeking to overturn a rule enacted in New York City—since abandoned—that prohibited licensed handgun owners, in most cases, from transporting their firearm to another location other than the address where it's registered.

There were a few exceptions to that rule. Gun owners were allowed, under the rule, to take their firearm to an authorized shooting range or gun club, but only those within New York City. They were also permitted to bring it to a gunsmith or hunting ground with prior permission from the New York City Police Department.

That rule was upheld as lawful by both a federal judge from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

But earlier this year, the Supreme Court said it was willing to hear arguments in the case, which raised concerns among supporters of stronger gun control that a more conservative high court could hand down a ruling that expands the current understanding of the Second Amendment.

Both New York City and the New York State Legislature acted earlier this year in an attempt to have the case dropped by the high court.

The city's regulation was changed to allow handgun owners to transport their weapons to second homes or shooting ranges outside New York City. The Legislature, meanwhile, passed a law that set a statewide standard for the transportation of firearms.

The state's new law, enacted in July, prescribes, broadly, that handgun owners may transport their firearms to, and from, locations where they're legally allowed to possess such a weapon, but that it must be locked up during transit.

Days after the measure was signed into law, attorneys for New York City filed a request with the Supreme Court to toss arguments in the case and send it back to the Second Circuit, where the city's initial regulation has already been upheld.

They argued in the filing, called a suggestion of mootness, that the new changes from both the city and state made the association's challenge moot. In other words, they had addressed the provisions the group took issue with, so there was no longer any grounds for a legal challenge, attorneys for the city wrote.

That doesn't mean the city could, then, reverse course again and enact the previous rule challenged by the gun association. The law approved by the Legislature would prevent the city from enacting such a regulation in the future.

The litigation is considered a test for the Supreme Court, which hasn't taken up a firearms case in nearly a decade. Observers have warned that a ruling in favor of the association from the high court could expand gun rights at a time when many Democrat-led states are imposing new restrictions on firearms.

New York state, for example, has passed a series of laws in the last several years aimed at limiting who can own a gun in the state, and under what circumstances. The Legislature, spearheaded by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has also placed restrictions on which types of guns are legal.

To be clear, neither the state nor the city of New York publicly interpreted the challenged regulation to be unlawful. Attorneys for New York City had argued in the lower courts that the rule was promulgated to promote public safety and was lawful.

The New York City Police Department, which first created the rule, conceded in its amendment to the regulation in April that it was proposing the change in an attempt to remove the case from the Supreme Court's docket.

About a month later, the Trump administration moved to weigh in on the case.

In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice argued that New York City's regulation both impeded on the Second Amendment and unlawfully restricted interstate commerce by limiting where gun owners could bring their firearms.

"Few laws in the history of our nation, or even in contemporary times, have come close to such a sweeping prohibition on the transportation of arms," the DOJ wrote at the time.

This is a developing report.