United States v. Rahimi Revisions: 6/25/24
The Supreme Court upheld the federal law prohibiting people under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms, ruling 8-1 that American history has long recognized the government's authority to disarm individuals who a court finds pose a credible threat to another person's safety.
The decision clarifies that Second Amendment challenges do not require the government to produce a near-identical historical copy of a modern gun law — only a historical practice rooted in the same principle — giving lawmakers and lower courts clearer guidance going forward.
“Rather, we conclude only this: An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
The majority's precise, self-limiting statement of its holding — emphasizing both the judicial-finding requirement and the temporary nature of the disarmament.
How it got here: A federal district court rejected Rahimi's Second Amendment challenge; after the Supreme Court decided Bruen, a new Fifth Circuit panel reversed and struck down the statute; the Supreme Court then agreed to hear the government's appeal.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Zackey Rahimi's former girlfriend went to court after he assaulted her in a parking lot, fired at her as she fled, and threatened to kill her if she reported the incident. A Texas court issued a restraining order finding that he posed a credible threat to her physical safety. Police later found guns at Rahimi's home despite the order, and the government charged him under a federal law that automatically bans firearms possession for anyone subject to a qualifying domestic violence restraining order. Rahimi argued the law violated the Second Amendment on its face.
The question before the Court
Can a federal law that strips gun rights from people under domestic violence restraining orders survive a Second Amendment challenge?
The Court's answer
Yes — The Court ruled 8-1 that §922(g)(8) is constitutional, at least as applied to someone like Rahimi who was found by a court to pose a credible threat to another's physical safety. Since the founding, American law has included mechanisms for disarming people who threaten others — from "surety laws" that required bond-posting (with jail for failure to comply) to "going armed" laws that punished those who terrified the public by carrying weapons. Together, these historical regimes confirm the same core principle as §922(g)(8): a court may temporarily disarm someone found to be a genuine physical threat.
The modern law does not need to be an exact replica of any historical rule, only "relevantly similar" in why and how it burdens the right to bear arms. Because §922(g)(8) requires a judicial finding of credible threat, operates only while the restraining order is in effect, and imposes a burden no heavier than founding-era punishments like imprisonment, it fits comfortably within the nation's regulatory tradition.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People under qualifying domestic violence restraining orders nationwide remain prohibited from possessing firearms — a protection advocates say is critical to abuse victims' safety. The ruling also signals that many other challenged gun laws have a stronger chance of surviving Second Amendment scrutiny than the Fifth Circuit's strict reading of the Court's 2022 Bruen decision had suggested.
What changes now
The case returns to the lower courts, and Rahimi's conviction stands. Justice Gorsuch's concurrence notes that today's ruling leaves open several important questions — including whether the government can disarm someone without a judicial finding of a credible threat, whether permanent disarmament is constitutional, and whether a person may be disarmed while still needing a firearm for self-defense. Those questions will be resolved in future cases as Second Amendment litigation continues to develop.
What this does not decide
The ruling decides only that §922(g)(8) is constitutional in at least some applications — not every possible restraining order situation. The Court explicitly left open whether disarmament without a judicial credible-threat finding is valid, whether permanent disarmament passes constitutional muster, and whether other categorical gun bans affecting different groups of people are consistent with the Second Amendment.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan, concurs while noting she still believes Bruen was wrongly decided. She writes to defend the Court's flexible historical approach against the dissent's rigid reading, which she argues would make it nearly impossible to sustain common-sense gun regulations. She also contends that §922(g)(8) would easily pass even under a means-end scrutiny standard, given the government's compelling interest in keeping firearms away from domestic abusers and the stark statistics on intimate partner gun violence.
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch agrees that Rahimi's facial challenge fails because the historical record shows courts could temporarily disarm people found to threaten others after a judicial determination. He writes separately to underscore the ruling's narrow scope: the Court does not decide whether the government may disarm someone without a judicial credible-threat finding, whether permanent disarmament is ever constitutional, whether someone may be disarmed despite needing a gun for self-defense, or whether other categorical legislative disarmament schemes are permissible.
Concurrence — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh writes at length to defend the historical-tradition methodology for interpreting vague constitutional rights, arguing it is superior to policy-based balancing tests like means-end scrutiny. He contends that text, pre-ratification history, post-ratification history, and precedent are the proper tools for constitutional interpretation, and that balancing tests risk turning judges into policymakers. He rejects extending heightened-scrutiny frameworks to the Second Amendment.
Concurrence — Justice Barrett
Justice Barrett writes to clarify the proper role of historical analogy under an originalist framework. Historical gun regulations reveal a principle, not a fixed mold; courts must identify that principle at the right level of generality — not so narrow as to demand a near-identical historical twin, and not so broad as to water down the right. She concludes the Court struck the right level here: since the founding, legislatures have had authority to prohibit people who pose a demonstrated danger from possessing guns.
Concurrence — Justice Jackson
Justice Jackson joins the decision fully but writes to flag a growing crisis in how lower courts apply Bruen's history-and-tradition test. She catalogs extensive evidence that courts are reaching inconsistent, unprincipled results — diverging on virtually every consequential Second Amendment question — and argues the Supreme Court bears responsibility for this confusion. While today's clarification that regulations need only comport with underlying principles (not produce a historical twin) helps, she warns that much more guidance is still needed.
Dissent — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas argues the government failed to produce a single historical regulation with both a comparable burden and a comparable justification to §922(g)(8). Surety laws shared the law's justification but imposed only a financial burden — they preserved firearms rights entirely. Affray laws addressed public conduct, not private domestic violence. The majority improperly stitches pieces from both regimes together to construct a pseudo-analogue, which Thomas argues is exactly the kind of 'regulatory blank check' Bruen was designed to prevent. He would hold §922(g)(8) unconstitutional.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Under the Court's 2022 Bruen framework, a gun regulation is constitutional only if it is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. The government bears that burden. The Court clarified, however, that a modern law does not need a near-identical historical twin — it needs only a 'relevantly similar' historical analogue, meaning one that burdened the right in a comparable way and for a comparable reason.
- The Court identified founding-era 'surety laws' as the first key analogue. These laws authorized magistrates to require individuals suspected of future misbehavior — including domestic abusers — to post a bond. Failing to post the bond meant jail. At least ten states extended these laws specifically to people who 'went armed' in a threatening manner, and the laws required a judicial finding before any burden was imposed.
- The Court also identified 'going armed' laws — a subset of the ancient prohibition on affrays (public fighting) — which punished people who carried 'dangerous and unusual weapons' in a manner that terrified the public, with penalties including forfeiture of arms and imprisonment. Some states expressly codified these prohibitions, and they also rested on judicial determinations of threatening behavior.
- Together, these two regimes confirm a consistent founding-era principle: when a court specifically finds that an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the government may disarm that person. Section 922(g)(8) shares both the 'why' and the 'how' of these historical restrictions — it targets individually adjudicated threats, not the general public.
- Section 922(g)(8) satisfies the historical analogy test: it applies only after a court finds a 'credible threat to physical safety,' its restriction lasts only as long as the restraining order is in effect (making it temporary like surety bonds), and its penalty — temporary disarmament — is a lesser burden than the imprisonment the going armed laws authorized.
- Because Rahimi brought a facial challenge — requiring him to show no circumstances exist under which the law is valid — the government need only demonstrate the law is constitutional in some applications. It clearly is when applied to someone, like Rahimi, who received notice, had an opportunity to be heard, and was then found by a court to pose a credible threat to another's physical safety.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen (597 U. S. 1)
Reaffirmed as the governing framework, but clarified to require a 'historical analogue,' not a 'historical twin.'
Reaffirms District of Columbia v. Heller (554 U. S. 570)
Reaffirmed that the Second Amendment right is not unlimited and many historical firearm restrictions remain presumptively lawful.