United States v. Rahimi

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United States Supreme Court case

2024 United States Supreme Court case

United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and whether it empowers the government to prohibit firearm possession by a person with a civil domestic violence restraining order in the absence of a corresponding criminal domestic violence conviction or charge.

It came from a 2023 decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals invalidating a federal law prohibiting individuals from possessing firearms while under a restraining order relating to domestic abuse . The Supreme Court reversed the 5th Circuit in an 8–1 ruling and upheld the law . In its decision, the Court refined the Bruen test, stating that in comparing modern gun control laws to historic tradition, courts should use similar analogues and general principles rather than strict matches.

Background

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In 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling in _New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen _, which changed the way courts assessed laws related to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution . Rather than examining the history of the Second Amendment and its scope, then applying intermediate scrutiny if the former is unclear, the test articulated by Justice Clarence Thomas requires gun-related legislation to be in line with the country's historical firearm legislation.

According to that opinion, laws must have "historical analogues" to laws existing at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification in 1791 or incorporation in 1868 via the Fourteenth Amendment .

Zackey Rahimi was issued a civil restraining order by a Texas state court on February 5, 2020; the order barred him from engaging in certain harassment-related behaviors towards his ex-girlfriend or her child, as well as owning firearms. The order came after an incident in December 2019 where Rahimi assaulted his girlfriend in a parking lot following an argument. Noticing that a bystander had witnessed the altercation, Rahimi fired a gun at the witness. Despite his prohibition on owning firearms and communicating with his girlfriend, Rahimi repeatedly defied the order. In May 2020, Rahimi was arrested after approaching her house in the middle of the night. In November 2020, he was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after threatening another woman with a gun.

Between December 2020 and January 2021, Rahimi took part in five shootings. First, he shot at a man who purchased drugs from him after the man spoke disrespectfully to him; Rahimi fired into the man's house with an AR-15. The next day, Rahimi was involved in a traffic collision and fired at the other driver. He fled the scene of the crash, returned, fired more shots at the other driver, then fled again. Three days after the first shooting, Rahimi fired a gun into the air while in the presence of children. Some weeks after that shooting, a truck on the highway flashed its headlights at Rahimi when he sped past the truck; Rahimi then followed the truck off the highway and fired shots at another car that had been following the truck. Finally, Rahimi fired a gun into the air at a fast food restaurant after a friend's credit card was declined.

Suspecting Rahimi of these shootings, officers executed a search warrant at his home, discovering a rifle and a pistol he admitted to possessing. Officers additionally found ammunition, magazines, and a copy of the protective order. He was charged and pleaded guilty in a federal district court of unlawful firearm possession under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits individuals from owning firearms if they are "subject to a court order that restrains [them] from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner."

Domestic violence protective orders related to bans on possessing a firearm became enacted by the 1968 Gun Control Act .

However, the federal law which enforced the restraining order in question was the 1994 Violence Against Women Act .

Procedural history

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Rahimi appealed his conviction, bringing a facial challenge to U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on Second Amendment grounds. The court rejected his challenge, and Rahimi appealed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals . A panel for the Fifth Circuit initially upheld Section 922(g)(8), but while Rahimi's petition for a rehearing was pending, the Supreme Court decided Bruen, causing the panel to withdraw its opinion. The parties filed supplementary briefs and re-argued the case before a new panel of three judges.

On February 2, 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) as unconstitutional, barring it from being enforced in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The Fifth Circuit withdrew the panel's opinion and filed a revised opinion on March 2, 2023, reaching the same result. On March 17, 2023, the United States Justice Department petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court decision and allow the federal law criminalizing firearm ownership by people under domestic violence restraining orders to stand.

Opinions of the Fifth Circuit

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Writing the February 2 opinion for the unanimous panel, Judge Cory T. Wilson rejected the government's argument that Second Amendment applies only to "law abiding, respectable citizens," citing Justice Amy Coney Barrett 's dissent in Kanter v. Barr, when she served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit .

Justice Barrett argued, "Founding era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons," or impose any "virtue-based restrictions" on that right.

Judge Wilson then applied the historical tradition test articulated in Bruen in considering whether the historical analogues put forward by the Justice Department were applicable to Section 922(g)(8). The Justice Department had submitted three categories of possible analogues: "(1) English and American laws...providing for the disarmament of 'dangerous' people, (2) English and American 'going armed' laws, and (3) colonial and early state surety laws". The February 2 opinion stated that the historical laws disarming "dangerous" classes of people were not similar to the modern law, because "The purpose of these 'dangerousness' laws was the preservation of political and social order, not the protection of an identified person from the specific threat posed by another".

The revised March 2 opinion included an expanded concurrence from Judge [James C. Ho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wik

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