U.S. Supreme Court Justices on Tuesday appeared inclined to uphold the legality of a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to have guns in the latest major case to test the willingness of its conservative majority to further expand gun rights.
The Justices heard arguments in an appeal by President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s ruling striking down the law – intended to protect victims of domestic abuse – as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the measure failed a stringent test set by the Supreme Court in a 2022 ruling that required gun laws to be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” in order to survive a Second Amendment challenge.
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Some of the conservative Justices questioned the scope of the administration’s argument that, under the Second Amendment, people who are not law-abiding and responsible – categories that include domestic abusers – may be barred from possessing firearms.
Some of their questions, however, signaled openness to a standard that would permit laws that disarm people deemed dangerous, as opposed to merely irresponsible.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts focused on the word “responsible,” suggesting that it was too broad.
“I mean, not taking your recycling to the curb on Thursdays, if it’s a serious problem it’s irresponsible,” Roberts said, adding that “what seems irresponsible to some people might seem like, well, it’s not a big deal to others.” He also cited examples of a person who gets in a fist fight at a sports event or drives a small amount over the speed limit.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the law on behalf of the Biden administration, told Roberts that she was not using the term “not responsible” in a colloquial sense, instead asserting “the principle of responsibility as being intrinsically tied to the danger you would present if you had access to firearms.”
“And the reason that we use the term ‘not responsible’ is because it is the standard this court has articulated” in its three major gun rights rulings in the past 15 years, Prelogar said.
