The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns, handing a victory to President Joe Biden’s administration as the justices opted not to further widen firearms rights after a major expansion in 2022.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns, handing a victory to President Joe Biden’s administration as the justices opted not to further widen firearms rights after a major expansion in 2022.
The 8-1 ruling, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, overturned a lower court’s decision striking down the 1994 law as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had concluded that the measure failed the Supreme Court’s stringent test set in 2022 that required gun laws to be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” to comply with the Second Amendment.
Biden’s administration defended the law as critical to protect public safety and abuse victims, who often are women. It argued that the ban should survive because of the long tradition in the United States of taking guns from people deemed dangerous. It emphasized that guns pose a particularly serious threat in domestic violence situations and also are extremely dangerous to police officers called to respond.
Roberts wrote in the ruling that since the nation’s founding, firearm laws have targeted people who threaten physical harm to others.
“When a restraining order contains a finding that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner, that individual may—consistent with the Second Amendment—be banned from possessing firearms while the order is in effect”, Roberts wrote.
