By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court took up another major dispute over gun rights on Friday, agreeing to decide whether a 1994 federal law that bars people under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment.
The justices agreed to hear an appeal by President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s ruling that found that the law ran afoul of the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” because it fell outside “our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
The case involves a Texas man charged with illegal gun possession while subject to a domestic violence restraining order after assaulting his girlfriend.
The court will hear the case during its next term, which begins in October.
The United States, with the world’s highest gun ownership rate, remains a nation deeply divided over how to address firearms violence including frequent mass shootings even as the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, takes an expansive view of Second Amendment rights.
The court in June 2022 expanded gun rights in a landmark ruling called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, striking down New York state’s limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home.
That ruling declared for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. It also set a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and not simply advance an important government interest.
The 1994 law at issue in the current case prohibited a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm. It initially made the crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It has since been raised to 15 years.
Zackey Rahimi of the Texas city of Kennedale challenged the law after being charged under it in 2021.
Rahimi, who had a history of dealing drugs including cocaine, knocked his girlfriend to the ground after an argument in a parking lot, dragged her to his car, shoved her inside, causing her to head to hit the dashboard, according to a court filing. After realizing a bystander had seen his actions, according to the filing, Rahimi retrieved a gun and fired a shot. Rahimi later threatened to shoot his girlfriend. She obtained a court-approved restraining order, but Rahimi was arrested for violating it.
Rahimi was involved in five shootings in the Arlington, Texas area between December 2020 and January 2021, the filing stated, including one in which he fired bullets using an AR-15 rifle into the home of a person to whom he sold drugs. He was caught with a pistol and rifle during a police search of his home.
He asked a federal judge in Texas to dismiss his illegal gun possession charge under the law, arguing that it violated the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The judge rejected his Second Amendment argument and Rahimi subsequently pleaded guilty, receiving a six-year prison sentence. Rahimi ultimately prevailed on appeal, with the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February declaring the law unconstitutional in a ruling that applied to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
The 5th Circuit initially had upheld the law but withdrew its opinion following the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling. Applying the Bruen ruling, the 5th Circuit concluded that banning people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms was “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court on behalf of Biden’s administration that the 5th Circuit’s ruling was “profoundly mistaken.” Prelogar wrote that “governments have long disarmed individuals who pose a threat to the safety of others” and that the 1994 law “falls comfortably within that tradition.”
Twenty-three states, mostly Democratic-led, urged the Supreme Court to hear the dispute, as did groups advocating for the prevention of gun violence and domestic abuse.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
