{"id":93712,"date":"2023-06-19T15:05:53","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T20:05:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93712"},"modified":"2023-06-19T15:21:46","modified_gmt":"2023-06-19T20:21:46","slug":"93712","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=93712","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Bad people’ – like Zachey Rahimi – have often been the central player in the Court’s decisions about expanding and protecting civil rights. If you’ll remember, Ernesto Miranda, namesake of the ‘Miranda Warning’<\/em> everyone knows by heart from all the police\/crime TV shows, was a long time thief and robber who had his first conviction for rape and kidnapping overturned because his civil rights protected by the 5th amendment had been violated.<\/p>\n

\n

Is SCOTUS ready for another 2A case?<\/a><\/p>\n

While the Supreme Court has sidestepped both New York\u2019s post-Bruen\u00a0<\/em>carry restrictions and Illinois\u2019 ban on so-called assault weapons and high capacity magazines in recent months, likely because both cases involved emergency appeals, justices are set to consider another case this Thursday that has made its way to the Court under more ordinary circumstances\u2026 but one that could have major implications for gun control laws going forward.<\/p>\n

The case is known as\u00a0U.S. v. Rahimi<\/em>, and its centered around the domestic violence restraining order issued against Zachey Rahimi that prohibited from owning firearms. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled\u00a0earlier this year<\/a>\u00a0that the federal statute in question is unconstitutional under the\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/em>test; not because the judges on the panel decided domestic violence is a minor concern, but because the Department of Justice\u2019s assertion that only \u201claw-abiding citizens\u201d possess the right to keep and bear arms is so broad that its without any limiting principle. From the Fifth Circuit\u2019s opinion:<\/p>\n

Indeed, the upshot of the Government\u2019s argument is that the Second Amendment right can be readily divested, such that \u201ca person could be in one day and out the next: . . . his rights would be stripped as a self-executing consequence of his new status.\u201d But this turns the typical way of conceptualizing constitutional rights on its head. And the Government\u2019s argument reads the Supreme Court\u2019s \u201claw-abiding\u201d gloss so expansively that it risks swallowing the text of the amendment.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Further, the Government\u2019s proffered interpretation of \u201claw-abiding\u201d admits to no true limiting principle. Under the Government\u2019s reading, Congress could remove \u201cunordinary\u201d or \u201cirresponsible\u201d or \u201cnon-lawabiding\u201d people\u2014however expediently defined\u2014from the scope of the Second Amendment. Could speeders be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms? Political nonconformists? People who do not recycle or drive an electric vehicle? One easily gets the point: Neither Heller nor Bruen countenances such a malleable scope of the Second Amendment\u2019s protections; to the contrary, the Supreme Court has made clear that \u201cthe Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans,\u201d Heller, 554 U.S. at 581. Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless among \u201cthe people\u201d entitled to the Second Amendment\u2019s guarantees, all other things equal.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rahimi is probably\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>a model citizen. In addition to the domestic violence restraining order, he\u2019s accused of multiple shootings in the Dallas\/Fort Worth area. But the state of Texas didn\u2019t try to hold Rahimi without bond in those cases, which would have also kept him away from guns. Instead, they relied on a civil order of protection to deny him the ability to lawfully possess a firearm; a legal shortcut that might not be lawful after all.<\/p>\n

Now the Supreme Court is set to consider Rahimi\u2019s case in conference this Thursday, and with appellate courts starting to split on several other prohibited persons statute all eyes on are the justices to see if they\u2019ll take up the case or allow the Fifth Circuit\u2019s decision to stand. NBC News provided its own\u00a0slanted coverage of the case<\/a>, and while its report is just as biased as you\u2019d expect, there was one passage that I think is largely correct.<\/p>\n

\n

The path to victory likely involves winning the votes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Although both were part of the 6-3 conservative majority in Bruen, Kavanaugh wrote a separate concurring opinion joined by Roberts in which he outlined what he called \u201cthe limits of the court\u2019s decision,\u201d making it clear that the Second Amendment does allow for gun regulations.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Citing previous court rulings, Kavanaugh specifically highlighted the prohibition on the possession of firearms by felons and people with mental illnesses as an example of laws that were not under threat.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I suspect that Roberts and Kavanaugh are the most likely justices on the conservative wing of the Court to uphold Rahimi\u2019s conviction, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a done deal by any means. The lack of limiting principle in the DOJ\u2019s argument is a valid concern on the part of the judiciary, and under the\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/em>test laid out by the Supreme Court last year the government strained to find any true historical analogue to a prohibition on gun ownership because of a civil order issued by a court.<\/p>\n

The earliest we\u2019ll learn whether SCOTUS has accepted the\u00a0Rahimi<\/em>\u00a0case will be next Monday when the Court issues its orders from this week\u2019s conference. I won\u2019t be surprised if there are four justices who are ready to hear the DOJ\u2019s appeal, but acceptance doesn\u2019t guarantee that the Biden administration\u2019s argument is going to carry the day if and when\u00a0Rahimi\u00a0<\/em>is heard by the highest court in the land. If the Court follows its own test instead of just relying on the status quo I think there\u2019s a very good chance that the Fifth Circuit\u2019s verdict will stand\u2026 but first we have to see if SCOTUS will step in or stand by once again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘Bad people’ – like Zachey Rahimi – have often been the central player in the Court’s decisions about expanding and protecting civil rights. If you’ll remember, Ernesto Miranda, namesake of the ‘Miranda Warning’ everyone knows by heart from all the police\/crime TV shows, was a long time thief and robber who had his first conviction … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93713,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93712\/revisions\/93713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}