The Supreme Court on Friday upheld federal prohibitions on possession of firearms for those who are subjected to domestic violence restraining orders.
In an 8-1 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
The decision in Rahimi v. United States marks the high court’s first major Second Amendment decision since its landmark ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which held that courts must look at whether a gun law is consistent with America’s “history and tradition” of firearm regulation. The test became a point of contention for some lower court judges who said it was difficult to apply, in part due to an array of different interpretations of the test that have been applied since 2022.
Attorney General Merrick Garland had repeatedly called on the high court to restrain domestic violence offenders from possessing guns and praised the decision on Friday.
“As the Justice Department argued, and as the Court reaffirmed today, that commonsense prohibition is entirely consistent with the Court’s precedent and the text and history of the Second Amendment,” Garland said.
The outcome of Rahimi provided clarity on how the historical framework established in Bruen applies to modern gun control measures, with Roberts suggesting the test set in Bruen was “not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.”
“The Second Amendment permits more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 1791,” Roberts said. Without directly undercutting Thomas’s landmark majority opinion from two years ago, he emphasized that the case explained “a challenged regulation that does not precisely match its historical precursors ‘still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.'”
Thomas, the author of Bruen, was the lone dissenter among the rest of the court and expressed outrage in a lengthy dissent from the majority. After the high court’s 2022 opinion, he wrote that the “directive was clear.”
“A firearm regulation that falls within the Second Amendment’s plain text is unconstitutional unless it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Thomas said, adding that “not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest member of the court appointed by President Joe Biden, chastised the Bruen precedent as a test that “appears to be creating chaos” in lower courts as different judges formulate inconsistent decisions about the constitutionality of gun laws.
“I concur in today’s decision applying Bruen. But, in my view, the Court should also be mindful of how its legal standards are actually playing out in real life,” Jackson warned.
The Rahimi case ultimately posed a significant challenge for the Supreme Court’s delicate balancing act between adhering to Second Amendment rights and upholding the rule of law.
At the center of the high court fight was defendant Zackey Rahimi, who previously pleaded guilty to possessing firearms while under a civil protective order that banned him from harassing, stalking, or threatening his ex-girlfriend and their child and also banned him from having guns. Rahimi remains in jail as he faces separate gun charges, including for his participation in a string of five different shootings between December 2020 and January 2021.
Separate from his state criminal charges, a grand jury indicted Rahimi on a charge of violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), a law that bans someone under such an order from having a gun, which carries a punishment of up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Rahimi had said that the law violated the Second Amendment.
Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in favor of Rahimi over his bid to challenge the federal statute surrounding gun ownership for individuals under a civil domestic violence restraining order. The 5th Circuit ultimately found the federal statute was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment and the Bruen precedent.
The appeals court’s decision was met with strong opposition from the Biden administration, prompting Garland to appeal to the Supreme Court. The Biden administration argued that the law is necessary to protect victims of domestic violence, citing statistics that show a significant proportion of domestic homicides involve firearms.
In Bruen, the court established that firearms regulations must align with the nation’s “historical tradition.” This precedent was set when the justices, in a 6-3 decision written in 2022 by Justice Clarence Thomas, overturned New York’s handgun licensing requirements.
During the oral arguments, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar emphasized the risks posed by allowing people deemed dangerous to possess guns. She argued that those under restraining orders fall into a category of “not responsible citizens” who historically have been subject to disarmament for public safety reasons.
Roberts and other justices questioned the appropriate legal test to balance the Second Amendment rights with public safety concerns. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court’s majority in Bruen, highlighted that the Second Amendment permits various gun regulations, including the disarmament of those who pose a danger to society.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden‘s son, Hunter Biden, was found guilty by a jury this month for violating a subcomponent of § 922(g) which prohibits people who are under the influence of illicit drugs or have been addicted to such substances from owning a firearm. The jury convicted the younger Biden of lying on a federal form to purchase a gun by asserting he was not a drug user, lying to a federally licensed firearm dealer, and illegally owning the gun for 11 days.
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As Hunter Biden’s attorneys have vowed to appeal the conviction, the 5th Circuit recently found that Section 922(g)(3), which punishes anyone who is an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance,” is unconstitutional under the Bruen framework. But the decision on Friday in Rahimi may suggest that the younger Biden may continue to face hurdles to challenge the federal law he was convicted under.
The younger Biden’s case could take longer to reach the high court as his appeals process has yet to begin, but the similarities behind another similar case that is further along in the process could serve as a vehicle for his bid to challenge the law under which he was convicted.
