The US Supreme Court will take up a major new Second Amendment case, agreeing to decide the fate of a federal law that bars gun possession by people who are subject to a domestic-violence restraining order.
(Bloomberg) — The US Supreme Court will take up a major new Second Amendment case, agreeing to decide the fate of a federal law that bars gun possession by people who are subject to a domestic-violence restraining order.
The justices said they will hear the Biden administration’s appeal of a ruling that declared the 1994 law unconstitutional. The administration said the federal appeals court decision “threatens grave harms for victims of domestic violence.”
The case, which the Supreme Court will consider in the nine-month term that starts in October, will test the reach of the court’s year-old ruling establishing a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public. That decision said gun laws can survive only if the government can show a history of similar, or at least analogous, restrictions.
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Lower courts have since used that reasoning to find a bevy of gun laws unconstitutional, including bans on sales to minors, restrictions on people who are under indictment or were convicted of nonviolent crimes and prohibitions on untraceable “ghost guns” and on weapons with the serial numbers removed.
The high court case involves Zackey Rahimi, who was indicted under the domestic-violence gun law after taking part in five shootings near Arlington, Texas in 2020 and 2021. At the time, Rahimi was subject to a two-year restraining order secured by an ex-girlfriend he was accused of assaulting and threatening. He was sentenced to more than six years in prison after pleading guilty to the federal charge, while reserving his right to appeal.
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said that while Rahimi was “hardly a model citizen,” he was entitled to Second Amendment protections. The panel of three Republican-appointed judges said the federal law lacked a historical analogue, calling it “an outlier that our ancestors never would have accepted.”
US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, told the justices that the 5th Circuit overlooked important historical evidence, including colonial and early state laws that allowed the disarming of dangerous individuals.
“Governments have long disarmed individuals who pose a threat to the safety of others,” Prelogar argued in the appeal. The 1994 law “falls comfortably within that tradition.”
Rahimi’s lawyers say none of the laws invoked by the government are apt parallels.
Those laws “did not impose a years-long nationwide ban on all firearm possession against citizens who retained all other rights of full civic participation,” Rahimi’s team argued. “They did not threaten imprisonment up to ten years or fifteen years for keeping a gun in the bedroom.”
In urging against review, Rahimi’s lawyers contended the law is sparingly applied, saying the federal government charges fewer than 50 people per year under the statute. The Biden administration countered that the federal background-check system has blocked the sale of firearms to more than 76,000 people because of domestic-violence restraining orders since 1998.
The case could affect state laws as well as the federal statute. An Illinois-led group backing the administration said that almost every state either requires or permits courts to limit firearm access for people subject to domestic restraining orders.
The case is United States v. Rahimi, 22-915.
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