SCOTUS kicks felon firearm case to 11th Circuit

(CN) — The Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court Monday to decide if nonviolent felons should be allowed to own guns in light of a Second Amendment ruling from the high court last year.

The justices granted a petition from Raheem Morrissette, a convicted felon who contends he retains the right to bear arms because his crimes were not violent, but declined to take on the case themselves. Instead, they vacated the 11th Circuit’s judgement upholding Morrissette’s conviction for possessing a firearm as a felon and asked that it reconsider under the high court’s decision to uphold a federal law prohibiting people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns.

In a 8-1 ruling, the Supreme Court found that people who pose a credible threat to physical safety can be temporarily disarmed without violating the Second Amendment.

Morrissette argues this finding shows that the federal ban on felon firearm possession is unconstitutional because the court determined there must be an individualized finding of dangerousness when disarming individuals considered violent.

The justices reached the conclusion after analyzing historical laws dealing with dangerous persons to find that the law was consistent with historical tradition as required under its ruling in NYSRPA v. Bruen .

In the landmark 2022 ruling, the conservative majority opened the floodgates for challenges to firearm regulations after it set a new legal standard, requiring modern gun laws to have a historical precedent from the founding era. But lower courts have since struggled with how closely related the two laws must be.

“And there is no relevantly similar historical analogue to a lifetime ban on possession of firearms for non-violent felons,” Morrissette wrote in his petition to the Supreme Court.

“Someone who attempted to evade their taxes twenty years ago and has not committed a crime since, should retain their Second Amendment rights. Someone who committed felony shoplifting at 18 and is now a 40-year-old mother who has never been in trouble since, should retain their Second Amendment rights,” he added.

While Morrissette recognizes that historically, some jurisdictions have regulated firearm use by those considered presently violent, he argues not all people with a felony conviction are “presently violent.”

He claims historical regulations have almost always allowed people deemed violent to still possess weapons for self-defense; he points in his petition to Shay’s Rebellion, noting how Congress declined to disarm southerners who fought against the Union in the Civil War.

Because neither the federal government nor a single state barred all people convicted of felonies until the 20th century, the government cannot meet its burden to identify a historical tradition justifying the bans’ existence, Morrissette says, and the modern version of the law was adopted 177 years after the Second Amendment — far too recently to alter its meaning.

In Bruen , the justices recognized that “ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for their self-defense.” But Morrissette argues that he is still part of “the people” whom the Second Amendment protects, as the court failed to fully address what constitutes as law-abiding nature.

“Because ‘felons’ are not ‘categorically excluded from our national community,’ they fall within the amendment’s scope,” Morrissette wrote.

In March 2023, Morrissette was charged in a one-count federal indictment with knowing possession of the firearm as a felon. At the time he possessed the pistol seized during the traffic stop, he had Alabama felony convictions for first-degree marijuana possession, third-degree burglary, and first-degree criminal mischief.

On November 7, 2024, the 11th Circuit affirmed the lower court’s judgment and sentence. It is not yet clear when the court will rehear Morrissette’s case.

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