WASHINGTON — On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld a federal gun control law designed to safeguard victims of domestic violence.
In their first case related to the Second Amendment since the expansion of gun rights in 2022, the justices voted 8-1 in support of a 1994 prohibition on firearms for individuals under restraining orders to avoid contact with their spouses or partners. This decision overturned a previous ruling from the federal appeals court in New Orleans that had invalidated the law.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who penned the 2022 ruling, was the lone dissenter.
Just last week, the court reversed a ban from the Trump era on bump stocks, the high-speed gun accessories used in the most lethal mass shooting in recent U.S. history. The court determined that the Justice Department had overstepped its bounds in enforcing this ban.
The case on Friday was a direct result of the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. Zackey Rahimi, a man from Texas, was charged with assaulting his girlfriend during a dispute in a parking lot and subsequently threatening to shoot her.
During the arguments in November, several justices expressed worry that a ruling in favor of Rahimi might also endanger the background check system. The Biden administration has claimed that this system has prevented over 75,000 gun sales in the last 25 years due to domestic violence protective orders.
The case was also under scrutiny for its potential impact on cases where other gun ownership laws have been challenged, including the high-profile case of Hunter Biden. The son of President Joe Biden was found guilty of lying on a form to purchase a firearm while he was struggling with drug addiction. His legal team has indicated they will appeal.
A decision to invalidate the domestic violence gun law could have hinted at the court’s doubt about other laws as well. The justices may soon weigh in on one or more of these other cases.
Many of the gun law cases are a result of the Bruen decision. This Supreme Court ruling not only broadened Americans’ gun rights under the Constitution but also altered how courts should assess restrictions on firearms.
Rahimi’s case was brought to the Supreme Court after prosecutors appealed a ruling that dismissed his conviction for possessing guns while under a restraining order.
Rahimi was implicated in five shootings over a two-month period in and around Arlington, Texas, as noted by U.S. Circuit Judge Cory Wilson. When police identified Rahimi as a suspect in the shootings and arrived at his home with a search warrant, he confessed to having guns in the house and being under a domestic violence restraining order that banned gun possession, Wilson wrote.
Despite Rahimi not being “a model citizen,” as Wilson wrote, the law in question could not be justified by historical precedent. This is the standard Justice Clarence Thomas established in his opinion for the court in Bruen.
The appeals court initially upheld the conviction under a balancing test that considered whether the restriction improved public safety. However, the panel reversed its decision after Bruen. At least one district court has upheld the law since the Bruen decision.
Advocates for victims of domestic violence and gun control groups had urged the court to uphold the law.
According to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms are the most frequently used weapon in homicides involving spouses, intimate partners, children, or relatives in recent years. Guns were used in over half, 57%, of these murders in 2020, a year that witnessed a general rise in domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety reports that an average of seventy women per month are shot and killed by intimate partners.
Gun rights groups supported Rahimi, contending that the appeals court made the correct decision when it examined American history and found no restriction similar enough to justify the gun ban.
Disagreeguns are a constitutional right
Agreeguns are a constitutional right
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