The Supreme Court term this year ended with an explosion, as the right-wing bench handed down landmark cases rolling back affirmative action, slashing the Biden administration's student debt forgiveness program and giving a big thumbs up to a potential wedding website designer's desire not to serve hypothetical same-sex couples.
Already, the docket for next term is littered with cases that present existential threats to survivors of domestic violence, consumer protections and the administrative state.
United States v. Rahimi
The Supreme Court will hear a case concerning whether a federal gun ban for those under domestic violence orders is constitutional in perhaps the most well publicized case of the upcoming term.
At the center of the case is Zackey Rahimi, a drug dealer from Texas, who, according to court documents, was put under a protective order in February 2020 after he attacked his ex-girlfriend with whom he shares a child, and, later, threatened to shoot her if she told anyone. The order suspended Rahimi's handgun license, and expressly forbade him to have a firearm.
Between December 2020 and January 2021, Rahimi was involved in five shootings, per court documents citing the pre-sentence report.
They included shooting at a person's house after Rahimi sold that person drugs, shooting at a driver after a car accident (and then coming back in another car to do so again), shooting at a constable's car and firing into the air after a friend's credit card was declined at Whataburger.
The incidents prompted a police search of his home, which turned up a pistol and a rifle, along with a copy of the protective order.
He was sentenced to a 73-month prison term, from where he continued to fight the decision. A Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel — two Trump appointees and one Reagan one — had initially rejected his appeal, but reversed course after the Supreme Court handed down New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen last year, a landmark case that dramatically loosened gun restrictions through reasoning that suggested any gun control law lacking a historical analogue is unconstitutional.
The panel found that there is no historical support for a law prohibiting people who are under domestic violence orders from possessing guns.
Perhaps in part because Rahimi is such a spectacularly flawed plaintiff, his lawyers tried to bat back the Justice Department's appeal of the decision to the Supreme Court.
"This Court only 'rarely' grants certiorari to refine or clarify an important constitutional issue within the first year," Rahimi's lawyers wrote. "Lower courts are just beginning to grapple with Bruen, and the decision's recency is reason enough to deny certiorari."
But the Court granted cert anyway. Some are hoping that Rahimi's case will result in a narrowing of the vast implications of Bruen, if the Court can't stomach legally putting guns into the hands of violent people.
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