Supreme Court upholds bar on guns under domestic-violence restraining orders

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that bars anyone subject to a domestic-violence restraining order from possessing a gun. By a vote of 8-1, the court ruled that the law does not violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms.” The ruling in United States v. Rahimi was the court’s first Second Amendment case since it threw out New York’s handgun-licensing scheme nearly two years ago. In that case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the majority emphasized that courts should uphold gun restrictions only when there is a tradition of such regulation in U.S. history.

In Rahimi, the court reiterated that test, but it emphasized that its Second Amendment cases “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.” Courts considering the constitutionality of restrictions on gun rights must determine, Chief Justice John Roberts explained, “whether the new law is ‘relevantly similar’ to laws that our tradition is understood to permit, applying faithfully the balance struck by the founding generation to modern circumstances.”

The challenge to the law came from a Texas man, Zackey Rahimi. In 2020, a court in Texas entered a civil protective order against him after an incident in a parking lot in which Rahimi dragged his girlfriend back to his car and pushed her inside, causing her to hit her head on the dashboard. Rahimi also fired a gun at a bystander who witnessed the argument. The protective order specifically barred Rahimi from having a gun.