Supreme Court Upholds Law Disarming Domestic Abusers

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the government can take guns away from people subject to restraining orders for domestic violence, limiting the sweep of a blockbuster decision in 2022 that had vastly expanded Second Amendment rights.

Indeed, Friday’s decision amounted to a retreat from what had been an unbroken series of major rulings favoring gun rights that started in 2008, when the court first recognized an individual constitutional right to keep firearms in the home for self-defense.

In the 2022 decision, the court established a right to carry guns outside the home and announced a new test to assess all sorts of gun control laws, one that looked to historical practices to judge their constitutionality. That new test has sown confusion in the lower courts, with some judges striking down laws that had been on the books for decades.

The case decided Friday, United States v. Rahimi, asked whether a Texas man could be prosecuted under federal law making it a crime for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders to possess guns. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority in the 8-to-1 decision, said that the answer was yes and that Second Amendment rights have limits.

“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,” the chief justice wrote. “Since the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the majority opinion in the 2022 decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, was the only dissenter.