Should domestic abusers have the right to be armed? The Supreme Court could upend protections for survivors
A Texas man repeatedly violated a restraining order that forbids him from possessing a firearm under federal law. Justices will decide if judges went too far after they said it was unconstitutional, Alex Woodward reports
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Your support makes all the difference.In 2019, Zackey Rahimi allegedly assaulted his ex-girlfriend in a Texas parking lot and threatened to shoot her. She escaped and applied for a restraining order, and Rahimi was placed under a protective order that prevented him from possessing firearms.
But later that year, within a matter of weeks, and in flagrant violation of the order against him, he was involved in five other shootings in the state.
He was charged with violating federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence protection orders from possessing them, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to six years in prison.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision, rejecting his argument that the law infringed on his Second Amendment rights.
Then, after the US Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in a Second Amendment case last year, the appeals court reversed its decision, vacated his conviction, and opened a pathway for another major Supreme Court case that could radically reshape the nation’s gun laws during a growing crisis for gun violence.
On the last day of its latest term, the Supreme Court announced plans to hear arguments in a case that asks whether the government can prohibit domestic violence offenders from owning firearms, setting up another major Second Amendment test before the nation’s highest court.
Oral arguments in United States v Rahimi will begin later this year.
It will be one of only a handful of Second Amendment cases before the nine-member panel in recent years, after the court’s conservative supermajority ruling last year struck down a New York law that placed limits on gun owners’ abilities to carry their firearms outside of their home.
If the Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s decision, it will upend decades of protections for domestic violence survivors and open the door for people convicted of abusing their partners or their children to have a protected Second Amendment right to own a gun, even if a court finds that they are a credible threat.
“The Fifth Circuit’s extreme and reckless decision is a death sentence for women and families,” according to Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at gun reform advocacy group Everytown Law. “The Supreme Court must reverse this dangerous ruling. Domestic abusers do not have – and should not have – the constitutional right to possess a firearm.”
The new constitutional test for gun laws
Last June, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled 6-3 to overturn New York state law that only allowed residents who could prove a “special need” to possess concealed-carry licences to receive them.
The decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v Bruen – authored by Justice Clarence Thomas – also established a new test for gun laws against the Second Amendment, ruling that such restrictions should be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Justice Stephen Breyer, who retired at the end of that year’s chaotic term, warned in his dissent that broadly throwing restrictions against gun ownership into doubt would jeopardize protections for domestic violence survivors.
He emphasized the prevalence of guns in both domestic disputes, noting one study that found that a woman is five times more likely to be killed by an abusive partner if that partner has access to a gun, and that “the consequences of gun violence are borne disproportionately by communities of color, and Black communities.”
“Many states have tried to address some of the dangers of gun violence just described by passing laws that limit, in various ways, who may purchase, carry, or use firearms of different kinds,” he wrote. “The court today severely burdens states’ efforts to do so.”
He argued that it is both “constitutionally proper” and “necessary” for courts to consider the “serious dangers and consequences of gun violence” that compels states to regulate firearms.
Federal restrictions on gun ownership for domestic violence offenders have been in place for nearly 30 years. Nearly half of US states extend similar protections for dating partners, and 12 states include similar protections under temporary restraining orders.
Every year, more than 600 American women are fatally shot by intimate partners, a rate of roughly one every 14 hours, according to FBI reporting. Firearms are used to commit more than half of all intimate partner homicides in the US.
Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” or who is subject to protection orders resulting from a domestic violence incident from possessing a firearm.
‘Hardly a model citizen’: The case of Zackey Rahimi
Rahimi was subject to a domestic violence order in February 2020. Between December 2020 and January 2021, he was allegedly involved with five more shootings.
First, after someone who bought drugs from him “started talking trash” on social media, he fired into that person’s home with an AR-15 rifle, according to prosecutors.
The very next day, after colliding with another car, he allegedly shot at the driver, fled, and came back to the scene to fire more shots. Three days later, he fired several rounds into the air. A few weeks after that, in an apparent road rage incident, he slammed his brakes on a highway, followed a truck off an exit, then fired several shots at another car traveling behind it. Days later, after a friend’s credit card was declined at a fast food restaurant, he pulled out a gun and fired several shots in the air.
Rahimi was indicted by a federal grand jury, finding that he violated a federal ban on the possession of a firearm by anyone who is the subject of a domestic violence restraining order. He pleaded guilty.
But in February, less than one year after the Bruen ruling, three Republican-appointed judges on a federal appeals court unanimously took the side of the domestic violence offender, whose attorneys argued that the new standard from the Supreme Court would effectively strike down federal law that prohibits people like him from owning a gun.
“Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless part of the political community entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees, all other things equal,” Donald Trump-appointed judge Cory T Wilson wrote.
The test in Justice Thomas’s opinion in the Bruen case suggested that any restrictions on gun ownership should pass a historical analogue. The appeals court argued that there was no such thing in federal law that blocks domestic violence offenders from owning firearms.
“Our ancestors would never have accepted” such a policy, according to Judge Wilson.
The decision was widely derided by law enforcement agencies, civil rights group and gun reform advocates, warning that the loss of such basic protections imperil families across the country.
A group of 25 state attorneys general and a separate coalition of public health experts filed briefs in support of the government’s appeal to the Supreme Court urging that the justices swiftly reject the lower-court ruling.
“It is common sense that people who are under active restraining orders for domestic violence should not be able to get guns,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement that the time.
“This is a basic protection that states and the federal government have long imposed, and the efforts to undo this law will have grave consequences for survivors of domestic abuse, law enforcement, and the general public,” she added. “States must have the ability to protect our communities from gun violence and prevent dangerous people from getting guns.”
Typically, the Supreme Court will not immediately hear a case within a year after a related ruling so that the issue can work its way through lower courts before reaching the nine justices.
But US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court that the appeals court decision “threatens grave harms for victims of domestic violence.”
Lawyers for Rahimi have asked the justices to uphold the lower-court ruling.
“Bruen is less than a year old,” J Matthew Wright wrote in court filings. Lower courts are “just beginning to grapple” with the impacts of that case, he added.