Weiser: Supreme Court should uphold federal law prohibiting gun possession by domestic abusers

Apr. 21—Colorado's attorney general, Phil Weiser, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case about the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting gun possession by people with domestic violence restraining orders against them. Weiser joined a group of 25 state attorneys general asking the country's highest court to affirm the law, and overturn a federal appeals court ruling from Texas that found the federal law invalid.

Almost every state, including Colorado, also has a law limiting access to guns by people with such orders against them, according to a news release.

"We know from our work leading the Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board that most domestic violence-related murders involve firearms," Weiser said in a statement. "Consequently, when it comes to protecting domestic violence victims from being harmed or killed by their abusers, it's clear that gun safety protections make a difference and saves lives."

Zackey Rahimi was under a restraining order in Texas after he allegedly assaulted his girlfriend. He reportedly afterward was involved in several shootings, and police charged him with violating the federal law barring people subject to domestic violence protection orders from having guns. Earlier this year, a panel of judges from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, decided the law is unconstitutional.

Judge Cory Wilson wrote that the panel struck down the law in light of the Supreme Court's decision last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, in which the 6-to-3 conservative majority of justices found people have a broad right to carry guns outside their homes and invalidated a New York law requiring them to show cause to get open-carry permits.

Wilson wrote that since the Bruen decision, a government bears the responsibility of showing that its firearms regulation "is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms."

He noted the court's analysis wasn't about the worthiness of prohibiting access to firearms by perpetrators of domestic violence as a policy goal.

The decision from the Fifth Circuit marked a reversal of course from when the court initially denied Rahimi's request for an appeal, shortly before the Supreme Court made its Bruen ruling in June 2022.

But the petition by Weiser and other attorneys general argues the ruling puts domestic violence survivors at greater risk of harm or death at the hands of their abusers. A firearm in the home increases the likelihood of an abuser killing their intimate partner by five times, according to Weiser's news release.

Attorney General Merrick Garland also indicated in February the Department of Justice would ask the Supreme Court to review the Fifth Circuit's decision in Rahimi's case.

Other attorneys general who signed onto the "friend of the court" brief include those from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.