The Supreme Court Friday upheld a federal law that bans guns for those subject to domestic violence restraining orders (DVROs) in the first major test of the Second Amendment at the high court this term.

In an 8-1 opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the court’s majority said, “[W]e 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.” Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter.

Both liberal and conservative justices agreed with the Biden administration that there was a history and tradition of keeping firearms from dangerous persons, despite the lack of any specific ban that may have been in place when the Constitution was enacted in the 1790s.

The case, U.S. v. Rahimi, is first major test of the Second Amendment since a high court ruling in 2022 expanding rights of law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for protection, and could have major implications for several gun-rights measures working their way through the legal system and in state legislatures.

SUPREME COURT APPEARS LIKELY TO HAND BIDEN DOJ A WIN ON CHALLENGE TO GUN LAW

The conservative majority in that case known as “Bruen” said gun regulations must be consistent and analogous with “the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” in order to withstand present-day constitutional scrutiny.

It could also affect current cases that deal with whether current and former drug users can similarly be denied gun ownership – like that of Hunter Biden. The president’s son plans to challenge his conviction this month for lying on a federal registration form in 2018 about his addiction when buying a firearm.

The case before the court stemmed from a lawsuit that involves a Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, who – under a DVRO – argued he still had a right to keep a gun for self-protection. Rahimi was charged with separate state offenses that began with the 2019 physical assault of his ex-girlfriend and later another woman by use of firearms.

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 A Texas court in a civil proceeding found Rahimi had “committed family violence,” then granted his former girlfriend a protective order that included suspension of Rahimi’s gun license. Court records show he was warned gun possession under the protective order would be a federal offense.

After repeatedly violating the order, including approaching the victim and threatening her, Rahimi was also accused of firing a gun in public in five different locations within a span of weeks. Police then searched his residence and found handgun, rifle, and ammunition.

While contesting some of the allegations against him, he pleaded guilty to a violation of federal law for later possessing a handgun despite an earlier restraining order, but then appealed.

The 5th Circuit U-S Court of Appeals ruled for Rahimi, saying the federal restriction was unconstitutional since there was no historical analog justifying the burden on individual self-defense rights.

 A major question was whether there was a precise analog now to the 18th century legal concept of domestic violence and gun rights– that would give modern day legislatures and courts the discretion to limit gun possession for those deemed dangerous or irresponsible.

Friday’s decision in the DVRO case was narrow in scope, focusing only on whether the Second Amendment protects those considered a danger to society.

“When a restraining order contains a finding that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner, that individual may—consistent with the Second Amendment—be banned from possessing firearms while the order is in effect,” the Chief Justice wrote for the majority. 

“Since the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. As applied to the facts of this case, [the statute] fits comfortably within this tradition,” he wrote.  

Six justices filed separate concurrences, agreeing with the outcome, but offering separate thoughts on the scope of the majority opinion—signaling some concerns with Roberts’ reasoning laid out in the majority opinion.

Those were Justices Sonia Sotomayor – supported by Elana Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Thomas wrote a long dissenting opinion. 

“The question before us is not whether Rahimi and others like him can be disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Instead, the question is whether the Government can strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order—even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime. It cannot,” he said. 

“The Court and Government do not point to a single historical law revoking a citizen’s Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence. The Government has not borne its burden to prove that [the statute] is consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.

 “The Framers and ratifying public understood ‘that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty,’” he continued. 

“Yet, in the interest of ensuring the Government can regulate one subset of society, today’s decision puts at risk the Second Amendment rights of many more. I respectfully dissent,” he said.

The Supreme Court on Friday put new limits on the 2nd Amendment, ruling that dangerous people who have threatened a domestic partner may be denied their right to have guns.

The 8-1 decision upholds federal and state laws that take away guns from persons who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders.

“Since the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” said Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the court.

The outcome shows that the conservative justices are willing to restrict 2nd Amendment. The court reversed a ruling by the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which had struck down part of the Violence Against Women Act. The law authorizes judges to remove guns from persons who pose a “credible threat” to a domestic partner or a child.

In the past, gun rights advocates had argued that a responsible and law-abiding person has a right to have a gun for self-defense, and the Supreme Court had agreed. Two years ago, the justices ruled in favor of gun owners in New York and said they had a right to seek a permit to carry a concealed gun with them when leaving home.

But the justices were not willing to rule that the 2nd Amendment protects the rights of dangerous people who have threatened others.

“An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the 2nd Amendment,” the chief justice said. Equally important, seven other justices were willing to sign on to his opinion.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the New York opinion two years ago, dissented alone on Friday.

The defendant in the case before the court could not be easily described as law-abiding or responsible. Texas police said Zackey Rahimi was a drug dealer who had shot at people and cars five times within a month in December 2020.

They said he had fired into the house of a man who he said had been “talking trash” about him on social media. He also shot at a driver after getting into an auto accident, and fired wildly into the air “after a friend’s credit card was declined at a fast-food restaurant,” prosecutors said.

A year before the five shooting incidents, Rahimi had been brought before a judge in Arlington, Texas, because he had beaten and threatened a girlfriend who had a child with him. He grabbed her in a parking lot, forced her into his car and shot at a bystander who saw what happened. He later threatened to kill the woman if she reported the assault.

The federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994 said judges may enforce restraining orders that take away firearms from someone who has harassed or threatened an “intimate partner” or a child, and who poses a “credible threat.”

The judge issued a restraining order for two years that denied Rahimi the right to have firearms and warned him he would be guilty of a federal crime if he defied the order. Rahimi agreed, but then defied the order, including by threatening the woman again.

When police went to arrest Rahimi for the shooting incidents, they found a .45-caliber pistol, a .308-caliber rifle, magazines for both pistols and rifles, ammunition, approximately $20,000 in cash, and a signed copy of a court restraining order that prohibited him from having firearms.

He was indicted by a federal grand jury, pleaded guilty to violating the restraining order and was sentenced to six years in prison.

But last year,, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for Rahimi, overturning his conviction and declaring unconstitutional the part of the federal law that denied guns to those accused of domestic violence.

The three-judge panel, which included two Donald Trump appointees, agreed it was laudable to “protect vulnerable people in our society,” but said the “the 2nd Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans …. Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless among the people entitled to the 2nd Amendment’s guarantees.”

The judge presiding over former President Trump’s classified records case is holding a hearing Friday to consider whether the appointment of U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith and the funding of his investigations is “unlawful.”

Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida had postponed the trial stemming from Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged improper retention of classified records indefinitely. 

Upon postponing the trial, Cannon scheduled deadlines for reports on June 10 and 17 and a nonevidentiary hearing on a motion to dismiss on Friday, “based on unlawful appointment and funding of special counsel.” 

Cannon expanded Friday’s hearing to allow amici to argue before the court, as well as Trump defense attorneys and federal prosecutors. 

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Former Attorney General Ed Meese, who served under former President Reagan, filed an amicus brief in the case, in which he argues that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Smith as special counsel – a private citizen at the time – is in violation of the appointments clause of the Constitution. 

Garland appointed Smith as special counsel on Nov. 18, 2022 – just days after Trump announced he would run for president in 2024. 

“Not clothed in the authority of the federal government, Smith is a modern example of the naked emperor,” the brief states. 

“Improperly appointed, he has no more authority to represent the United States in this Court than Bryce Harper, Taylor Swift, or Jeff Bezos,” they argued. 

FEDERAL JUDGE POSTPONES TRUMP’S CLASSIFIED RECORDS TRIAL WITH NO NEW DATE

Attorney General Merrick Garland testifies during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, on Capitol Hill.  (AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

Meese argues that the “illegality” of Smith’s appointment is “sufficient to sink Smith’s petition, and the Court should deny review.” 

Meese and company noted in the brief that Smith was appointed “to conduct the ongoing investigation into whether any person or entity [including former President Trump] violated the law in connection with efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or the certification of the Electoral College vote held on or about January 6, 2021.”

Garland defended his move earlier this month during a hearing on Capitol Hill, arguing that “there are regulations under which the attorney general appoint special counsel. They have been in effect for 30 years, maybe longer, under both parties.” 

“The matter that you’re talking about, about whether somebody can have an employee of the Justice Department serve as special counsel has been adjudicated,” Garland argued, adding that other special counsel appointments he and other attorneys general have made cite a regulation that points to a statute. 

REP. MASSIE PRESSES GARLAND ON CONSTITUTIONALITY OF SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH’S APPOINTMENT

Meese, however, in his briefs filed in several points in the Trump cases, argued that “none of those statutes, nor any other statutory or constitutional provisions, remotely authorized the appointment by the Attorney General of a private citizen to receive extraordinary criminal law enforcement power under the title of Special Counsel.”

President Trump awards the National Medal of Freedom to former Attorney General Edwin Meese during a ceremony at the White House, Oct. 8, 2019. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Meese’s brief was even mentioned in a question by Justice Clarence Thomas in the Supreme Court oral arguments over Trump’s presidential immunity in Smith’s other case regarding 2020 election interference, which the high court is expected to decide this month.

Presenting arguments on June 21 in Florida on behalf of Meese will be Gene Schaerr; Josh Blackman on behalf of Professor Seth Barrett Tillman; and Matthew Seligman on behalf of constitutional lawyers, former government officials, and “State Democracy Defenders Action.”

Meanwhile, Cannon scheduled an additional hearing from June 24 to 26 and set deadlines for disclosures from the special counsel for early July and the defendants’ speedy trial report for July 19 – the final day of the Republican National Convention.

Trump is set to be sentenced in Manhattan after being found guilty on all counts in New York v. Trump, stemming from District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation on July 11. 

Former President Trump sits in Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on May 21, 2024. (Justin Lane/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Cannon scheduled a status conference for July 22 and another hearing for later that day.

Cannon did not schedule a new trial date.

Trump faced charges stemming from Smith’s investigation into his possession of classified materials. He pleaded not guilty to all 37 felony counts from Smith’s probe, including willful retention of national defense information, conspiracy to obstruct justice and false statements.

Trump was also charged with an additional three counts as part of a superseding indictment from the investigation – an additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

Trump pleaded not guilty.

Cannon’s move last month to indefinitely postpone the trial comes after the judge unsealed a slew of documents related to the FBI’s investigation into the former president and the FBI’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, estate in 2022.

The documents provided a detailed look into the personnel involved in the raid on Mar-a-Lago and a play-by-play timeline of it. One of the documents is an FBI file that suggests the agency’s investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was dubbed “Plasmic Echo.”

HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE INVESTIGATES ‘MANIPULATED’ EVIDENCE SEIZED BY FBI IN TRUMP CLASSIFIED RECORDS PROBE

Another unsealed FBI memo memorialized the role of Garland in the investigation.

In a document dated March 30, 2022, Garland provided his approval to allow the investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents to upgrade to a “full investigation.”

“This email conveys Department of Justice (DOJ) Attorney General (AG) [Merrick Garland] approval for conversion to a full investigation,” a synopsis of the restricted document reads.

Attorney General Merrick Garland (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Also, last month, Smith and federal prosecutors admitted in a court filing that documents seized during the raid on Mar-a-Lago are no longer in their original order and sequence.

“There are some boxes where the order of items within that box is not the same as in the associated scans,” Smith’s filing states.  

The prosecutors had previously told the court that the documents were “in their original, intact form as seized.” 

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, is investigating whether that evidence was “altered or manipulated.”

Smith also charged Trump in a separate jurisdiction, in Washington, D.C., out of his investigation into election interference and Jan. 6. Trump pleaded not guilty to those charges, as well.

That trial was postponed indefinitely. The Supreme Court is considering arguments on presidential immunity and whether Trump is immune from prosecution in Smith’s case.

The high court is expected to rule on the matter by the end of the term next week.