By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a federal law preventing felons from possessing firearms, rejecting a challenge by a California man who said the ban should not apply to non-violent felons like himself.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California said the government showed the “permanent and categorical disarmament” of felons was consistent with the country’s historical tradition of firearms regulation, and with the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Circuit Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said the ban helps protect from the public from people who commit “the most serious crimes” and represent a “special danger of misuse.”
The law was challenged by Steven Duarte, who had five convictions for nonviolent crimes, including vandalism and evading police, before being convicted and sentenced to 4-1/4 years in prison for violating the firearms ban.
Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor a federal public defender representing Duarte immediately responded to requests for comment.
SUPREME COURT PRECEDENTS
Friday’s decision was issued by an 11-judge panel as courts around the country struggle to apply two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions addressing Americans’ right to bear arms.
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court in 2022 expanded Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights to arm themselves in public, and required courts to look for historical analogues to justify new gun restrictions.
Two years later, in U.S. v. Rahimi, the court limited the Bruen decision by saying a “historical twin” wasn’t required, as upholding a federal ban on gun ownership by people subject to restraining orders for domestic violence.
Duarte had been a passenger in a red Infiniti that Inglewood, California, police pulled over in March 2020 for running a stop sign.
Police saw him throw a handgun out the window, and while searching the car’s interior found a loaded magazine that fit the handgun “perfectly.”
A three-judge 9th Circuit panel struck down the firearms ban as applied to Duarte and threw out his conviction last May, before the Rahimi case was decided. Friday’s decision overturned that ruling.
‘RED-HEADED STEPCHILD’
Wardlaw said five federal appeals courts have upheld the firearms ban as applied to all felons, while two have found it might be unconstitutional as to some felons.
In contrast, the federal appeals court in Philadelphia in December found it unconstitutional as to a man who pleaded guilty to making a false statement to obtain food stamps.
All 11 judges in Friday’s decision voted to uphold Duarte’s conviction, though three did so on procedural grounds.
Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a vocal critic of recent 9th Circuit gun control rulings, dissented from the court’s constitutional analysis.
He said the court is giving legislatures “effectively unconstrained authority to disarm entire swaths of our citizenry,” while leaving the 2nd Amendment “inarguably the red-headed stepchild of the Constitution.”
The case is U.S. v. Duarte, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-50048.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
