Amid a flurry of consequential decisions being issued on Friday, the Supreme Court has announced that it will hear a case during the next term that will decide the fate of a federal ban on those convicted of domestic abuse from purchasing and owning firearms. 

The man who challenged the law, Zackey Rahimi, was arrested in 2020 after commiting a string of shootings. When law enforcement identified him as the suspect, officers searched his home and discovered multiple firearms. At the time, he was under a restraining order for abusing his then-girlfriend. 

After pleading guilty in a Texas federal court to violating the 1994 federal law that bars domestic abusers from owning firearms, Rahimi was granted relief by three riders of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who held that the ban was unconstitutional, and therefore made his conviction on that charge moot. 

The unanimous declaration from the panel of three jurists was borne of a landmark Supreme Court decision last year that upended much of the nation’s Second Amendment jurisprudence. In New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen, the justices held that all firearms regulations must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The riders of the Fifth Circuit then held in March of this year that the ban must be overturned under that Supreme Court precedent, given that domestic abusers were never barred from exercising their Second Amendment rights before 1994, they stated. 

“The question is whether [the domestic abuser ban] is constitutional under the Second Amendment,” Judge Corey Wilson wrote in the court’s opinion. “In the light of N.Y. State Rifle and Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, it is not.” 

“The Supreme Court has made clear that ‘the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans,’” Judge Wilson continued. “Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless among ‘the people’ entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees, all other things equal.”

One of the three panel jurists who has emerged as a rising star in the conservative legal world, Judge James Ho, issued a concurring opinion in which he forcefully denounced domestic violence and stated his preference for stricter criminal penalties for those who commit such crimes. He went on to argue that the justice system can hold those violent abusers accountable without “offending” citizens’ Second Amendment rights. 

“Those who commit or criminally threaten domestic violence have already demonstrated an utter lack of respect for the rights of others and the rule of law,” Judge Ho wrote in his opinion. “So merely enacting laws that tell them to disarm is a woefully inadequate solution. Abusers must be detained, prosecuted, and incarcerated. And that’s what the criminal justice system is for.”