Supreme Court declines to decide if felons can be barred from having a gun

WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a federal ban against felons having guns despite a plea from the Biden administration that the court needs to resolve disagreements over the issue.

Instead, the high court without comment sent multiple cases back for further review in light of the justices' decision last month upholding a law aimed at keeping guns away from domestic abusers .

The cases involved very different circumstances.

One involved an Iowa man with a long criminal record that included convictions for theft, assault and intimidation with a dangerous weapon.

In another, a Minnesota man who had served time for a non-violent drug crime – selling cocaine – said he should not have been charged for having a gun after serving his sentence.

A Pennsylvania man argues his decades-old conviction for falsifying his income on an application for food stamps should not prevent him from having a firearm.

A Utah woman likewise said bad checks she wrote 17 years ago are not enough to block her right to a gun.

The statute being tested in all the cases was used in more than 7,600 convictions in 2022, according to the Justice Department. The convictions accounted for 12% of all federal criminal cases.

The dispute about whether people convicted of both violent and non-violent felonies can be barred from having a firearm has had “widespread and disruptive effects” that are threatening public safety," Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court.

Some of the firearm convictions overturned by lower courts involved murders, carjackers and drug traffickers, she noted.

The split in how courts are resolving the cases arose after the Supreme Court in 2022 struck down a New York law that required state residents to have "proper cause" to carry a handgun . In NYSRPA v. Bruen, the court said gun prohibitions must be grounded in history .

In last month’s opinion upholding gun bans for domestic abusers, Roberts said some courts mistakenly read that decision to mean they had to find a “historical twin” for a regulation, rather than a "historical analogue."

But Roberts also said that decision, and two other recent ones that have reshaped the Second Amendment debate, were not an “exhaustive analysis” of the amendment’s limits and protections.

Justices in the court’s liberal wing  − as well as Justice Amy Coney Barrett – emphasized the confusion that exists.

“Courts have struggled with this use of history in the wake of Bruen,” Barrett wrote in a concurrence.

Jackson said the Bruen test “appears to be creating chaos.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court declines to decide if felons can be barred from having a gun