Supreme Court rejects Arlington man's challenge to gun law meant to protect domestic violence victims

The Supreme Court upheld a federal law, challenged by an Arlington man, that prevents people under domestic violence restraining orders from having guns.

The court ruling, which was released on Friday, sided with the Biden administration 8-1. 

The decision keeps in place a 1994 ban on firearms for people under restraining orders to stay away from their spouses or partners. The justices reversed a ruling from the federal appeals court in New Orleans striking down the law. 

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the case. He says when an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to someone's physical safety, they may be temporarily disarmed.

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

"He looked at the reasons why people had the laws they did in the 1790s when the Second Amendment became law," said constitutional law expert David Coale. "It was never the case in the young United States that any old person could carry a firearm around. There was always some ability to restrict people who were violent and having weapons they should not have. That is the principle that should control here. That is why Mr. Rahimi is wrong."

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only dissenting justice.

"The presumption against restrictions on keeping and bearing firearms is a central feature of the Second Amendment. That Amendment does not merely narrow the Government’s regulatory power. It is a barrier, placing the right to keep and bear arms off limits to the Government," Thomas wrote.

The case before the court involves Zackey Rahimi, who lived in Arlington. 

Rahimi hit his girlfriend during an argument in a parking lot and then fired a gun at a witness in December 2019, according to court papers. 

Later, Rahimi called the girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone about the assault, the Justice Department wrote in its Supreme Court brief.

The girlfriend obtained a protective order against him in Tarrant County in February 2020.

Charged with domestic violence and under protective order prohibiting weapons, Rahimi fired guns at others five times in two months. He eventually pleaded guilty to violating a federal law passed by Congress in 1994 that prohibits people under domestic violence orders from having firearms.

However, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that conviction when the Supreme Court struck down New York’s stringent gun laws in 2022. The appeals court ruling in that case, New York Rifle and Pistol Association, Inc. vs. Bruen, nullified the federal law passed in 1994.

"The Supreme Court said safety has been a thing as long as we have had a country, and you were asking for a right that was never in any point in our nation’s history," Coale said.

Advocates for victims of domestic violence have been closely watching the case, including Jan Langbein, CEO of Dallas’ Genesis Women’s Shelter.

"Violence against women and children or violence against anyone shouldn’t be politicized and is certainly not a one side of the aisle issue. We all should have zero tolerance for this," she said.

Langbein says where there is violence in the home and access to firearms, the abuse victim is 500 times more likely to be murdered. 

"We have come back from a negative 10 to a zero. But for many survivors of domestic violence, there has not been a conviction or a protective order and there is a whole closet full of firearms," she said. "We encourage your readers and listeners to know there is help and home. But if there are firearms in the other room, they are in a lot of danger."

Rahimi pleaded guilty to state charges for domestic assault and another assault case against a different woman. He was sentenced to six years in prison and remains in the Tarrant County jail awaiting the outcome of his state case.

The ruling also resulted in lower courts striking down more than a dozen gun laws across the U.S. Those include age restrictions, bans on homemade ghost guns that don’t have serial numbers, and prohibitions on gun ownership for people convicted of nonviolent felonies or using illegal drugs.

Links between domestic violence and guns

On average, about 24 people are victims of domestic violence every minute in the United States, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Both men and women can be victims of domestic violence, but women are especially vulnerable, with nearly 29% saying they’ve experienced some form of domestic violence. In comparison, about 10% of men have admitted to experiencing some form of domestic violence. 

The U.S. also has one of the highest rates of femicide – killing a woman or girl because of her gender – among high-income countries, according to a report published by the Population Institute earlier this year. 

"Women in the U.S. are 28 times more likely to be intentionally murdered by guns than women in peer countries," the report said. 

FOX Digital and the Associated Press contributed to this report.