Besides issuing its two landmark decisions Friday, the Supreme Court also agreed to consider a Biden administration appeal in defense of a federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns.
At stake is a 1994 amendment to the Federal Firearms Act that prohibits those who are actively subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms. The case will be argued in the court's next term, which begins in October and ends next June.
The case involves Zackey Rahimi, whose conviction on possessing guns while subject to a restraining order was thrown out by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to court documents, Rahimi was involved in five shootings over two months in and around Arlington, Texas. When police identified Rahimi as a suspect in the shootings and showed up at his home with a search warrant, Rahimi admitted to having guns in the house and being subject to a domestic violence restraining order that prohibited gun possession.
Rahimi appealed his conviction, citing the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Bruen v. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., in which the court last year invalidated a 1911 New York state law and ruled citizens have the right to carry firearms outside of the home under the Second Amendment.
In his opinion for the 5th Circuit, Judge Cory Wilson, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote that although Raimi was "hardly a model citizen," he did not lose his constitutional right to have guns. Under Bruen, governments have to justify gun control laws by showing they are "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," and Wilson wrote the 1994 amendment could not be justified by looking to history.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, representing the Biden administration, turned to the Supreme Court and said in court papers the appeals court's ruling was "profoundly mistaken." The decision "threatens grave harms for victims of domestic violence," she wrote.
In response, Rahimi's attorneys urged the court not to hear the case, saying lower courts should be given more time to weigh the impact of last year's gun ruling before the high court intervenes again.
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