Why Hunter Biden is closely watching Tuesday’s oral arguments
From CNN's Ariane de Vogue and Devan Cole
Hunter Biden departs federal court after a plea hearing in Wilmington, Delaware, in July. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Tuesday's case could impact the legal future of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who has been charged with another federal firearms law blocked thanks to Bruen.
Hunter Biden is charged with breaking a law prohibiting the possession of firearms by a person who is an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” (He has pleaded not guilty.)
The 5th Circuit struck the law down earlier this year, relying heavily on both Bruen and its Rahimi rulings.
Patrick Daniels was stopped in 2022 for driving without a license plate. A search of the car uncovered several marijuana cigarette butts, a loaded pistol and a loaded rifle. A federal grand jury indicted Daniels for possessing a firearm as an unlawful user of a controlled substance. The 5th Circuit held that the law is not “consistent with our tradition of gun regulation.”
Hunter Biden’s legal team has signaled it plans to use the appeals court’s decision as part of its defense, with his attorney Abbe Lowell previously telling CNN that “the constitutionality of these charges are very much in doubt.”
“I think that if I were Biden’s attorney, I would find myself rooting for more expansive Second Amendment decisions,” said Benjamin Levin, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and expert on US gun laws.
13 min ago
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will be defending the federal gun law
From CNN's Joan Biskupic
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will be at the lectern Tuesday, defending the law that prohibits persons subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm.
Prelogar grew up in Boise, Idaho, graduated from Emory University and then Harvard Law School. As a teen, she entered state pageants and won the Miss Idaho title in 2004. She said she used the pageant scholarship money for law school.
“If you want to look at a through-line here, I like to go in front of judges,” Prelogar said recently about the experience on NPR’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”
The early pageant work may also contribute to her ease at the courtroom lectern and economy of language, shed of the usual “ums” and “ahs” that plague many lawyers.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. Department of Justice
Prelogar first became familiar with the inner workings of the Supreme Court as a law clerk to liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.
From 2014 to 2019, Prelogar was an assistant to the solicitor general arguing less prominent cases before the justices, and was separately detailed to an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, under special counsel Robert Mueller. In 2021,
President Joe Biden nominated her to be US solicitor general, and the Senate confirmed Prelogar by a vote of 53-36. Only six Republicans joined Democrats to approve her.
25 min ago
Supreme Court revisits the extent of the right to bear arms in the wake of recent mass shooting
From CNN's Ariane de Vogue
US Supreme Court Justices pose for their official photo in Washington, DC, in October 2022. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
It was only a year ago that the Supreme Court issued a landmark Second Amendment opinion that expanded gun rights nationwide and established that firearms rules must be consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition.”
Majority opinion author Justice Clarence Thomas infuriated supporters of gun control and elated advocates of gun rights but also generated confusion among lower court judges who found themselves reconsidering thousands of firearms rules.
Now, on Tuesday, the justices will gather again, in the wake of yet another mass shooting, to consider the scope of its 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, this time in the context of domestic violence.
The Supreme Court is considering a section of federal law that bars an individual subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm.
The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision could impact almost every type of gun control law, including one that President Joe Biden’s own son is charged with violating.
“Rahimi offers a chance for the justices to clarify aspects of Bruen’s test that have divided lower courts – including how judges should assess the historical tradition of gun regulation and how closely modern laws must mirror those that existed during the Founding Era,” said Andrew M. Willinger of the Duke University School of Law.
Last month in California, for instance, a federal judge struck down an assault weapon ban the state argued was needed to prevent mass shooters from acquiring those weapons. Many of the banned guns, the judge said, are also commonly used by “law-abiding” citizens for self-defense.
“California’s answer to the criminal misuse of a few is to disarm its many good residents. That knee-jerk reaction is constitutionally untenable, just as it was 250 years ago,” Judge Roger Benitez wrote.
On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up two other firearms-related cases, although they don’t address the Second Amendment the way Rahimi does.
One case is a challenge to the federal ban on bump stocks, devices that essentially allow shooters to fire semiautomatic rifles more rapidly, discharging potentially hundreds of bullets per minute.
The case goes to whether the Trump-era Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority when it reclassified bump stocks as “machine guns” under the National Firearms Act, banned bump stock devices in 2019 and ordered people who possessed the devices to destroy them or turn them into an ATF office.
The second involves the First Amendment. It’s an appeal from the National Rifle Association concerning the group’s allegations that the former head of New York’s Department of Financial Services tried to persuade banks and insurance companies to sever ties with the gun rights group.
The New York Department of Financial Services is responsible for initiating civil and criminal investigations and civil enforcement actions.
The NRA claims that Maria Vullo, who served as superintendent of the state agency, violated the organization’s First Amendment rights by threatening entities with adverse regulatory actions if they did business with the NRA.
Both cases will be heard early next year.
The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today on the Biden administration’s appeal of a ruling that struck down a law barring a person subject to a domestic violence protective order from possessing a firearm. Listen to live audio of the oral arguments here.
It’s the first major Second Amendment case since Justice Clarence Thomas and the conservative majority last year held that firearms rules must be consistent with the nation’s "historical tradition." The oral arguments also come in the wake of the latest mass shooting in Maine.
A Texas state court found that Zackey Rahimi’s attack on his girlfriend in a parking lot constituted “family violence” and prohibited him from approaching or threatening her. Rahimi was later charged with violating a 1994 federal law that bars a person subject to a protective order from possessing a firearm.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will represent the Biden administration; J. Matthew Wright, an assistant federal public defender from Amarillo, Texas, will represent Rahimi. A decision is expected by July.
Hunter Biden departs federal court after a plea hearing in Wilmington, Delaware, in July. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Tuesday's case could impact the legal future of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who has been charged with another federal firearms law blocked thanks to Bruen.
Hunter Biden is charged with breaking a law prohibiting the possession of firearms by a person who is an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” (He has pleaded not guilty.)
The 5th Circuit struck the law down earlier this year, relying heavily on both Bruen and its Rahimi rulings.
Patrick Daniels was stopped in 2022 for driving without a license plate. A search of the car uncovered several marijuana cigarette butts, a loaded pistol and a loaded rifle. A federal grand jury indicted Daniels for possessing a firearm as an unlawful user of a controlled substance. The 5th Circuit held that the law is not “consistent with our tradition of gun regulation.”
Hunter Biden’s legal team has signaled it plans to use the appeals court’s decision as part of its defense, with his attorney Abbe Lowell previously telling CNN that “the constitutionality of these charges are very much in doubt.”
“I think that if I were Biden’s attorney, I would find myself rooting for more expansive Second Amendment decisions,” said Benjamin Levin, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and expert on US gun laws.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar will be at the lectern Tuesday, defending the law that prohibits persons subject to domestic violence protective orders from possessing a firearm.
Prelogar grew up in Boise, Idaho, graduated from Emory University and then Harvard Law School. As a teen, she entered state pageants and won the Miss Idaho title in 2004. She said she used the pageant scholarship money for law school.
“If you want to look at a through-line here, I like to go in front of judges,” Prelogar said recently about the experience on NPR’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”
The early pageant work may also contribute to her ease at the courtroom lectern and economy of language, shed of the usual “ums” and “ahs” that plague many lawyers.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. Department of Justice
Prelogar first became familiar with the inner workings of the Supreme Court as a law clerk to liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan.
From 2014 to 2019, Prelogar was an assistant to the solicitor general arguing less prominent cases before the justices, and was separately detailed to an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, under special counsel Robert Mueller. In 2021,
President Joe Biden nominated her to be US solicitor general, and the Senate confirmed Prelogar by a vote of 53-36. Only six Republicans joined Democrats to approve her.
US Supreme Court Justices pose for their official photo in Washington, DC, in October 2022. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
It was only a year ago that the Supreme Court issued a landmark Second Amendment opinion that expanded gun rights nationwide and established that firearms rules must be consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition.”
Majority opinion author Justice Clarence Thomas infuriated supporters of gun control and elated advocates of gun rights but also generated confusion among lower court judges who found themselves reconsidering thousands of firearms rules.
Now, on Tuesday, the justices will gather again, in the wake of yet another mass shooting, to consider the scope of its 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, this time in the context of domestic violence.
The Supreme Court is considering a section of federal law that bars an individual subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm.
The Supreme Court’s ultimate decision could impact almost every type of gun control law, including one that President Joe Biden’s own son is charged with violating.
“Rahimi offers a chance for the justices to clarify aspects of Bruen’s test that have divided lower courts – including how judges should assess the historical tradition of gun regulation and how closely modern laws must mirror those that existed during the Founding Era,” said Andrew M. Willinger of the Duke University School of Law.
Last month in California, for instance, a federal judge struck down an assault weapon ban the state argued was needed to prevent mass shooters from acquiring those weapons. Many of the banned guns, the judge said, are also commonly used by “law-abiding” citizens for self-defense.
“California’s answer to the criminal misuse of a few is to disarm its many good residents. That knee-jerk reaction is constitutionally untenable, just as it was 250 years ago,” Judge Roger Benitez wrote.
On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to take up two other firearms-related cases, although they don’t address the Second Amendment the way Rahimi does.
One case is a challenge to the federal ban on bump stocks, devices that essentially allow shooters to fire semiautomatic rifles more rapidly, discharging potentially hundreds of bullets per minute.
The case goes to whether the Trump-era Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives exceeded its authority when it reclassified bump stocks as “machine guns” under the National Firearms Act, banned bump stock devices in 2019 and ordered people who possessed the devices to destroy them or turn them into an ATF office.
The second involves the First Amendment. It’s an appeal from the National Rifle Association concerning the group’s allegations that the former head of New York’s Department of Financial Services tried to persuade banks and insurance companies to sever ties with the gun rights group.
The New York Department of Financial Services is responsible for initiating civil and criminal investigations and civil enforcement actions.
The NRA claims that Maria Vullo, who served as superintendent of the state agency, violated the organization’s First Amendment rights by threatening entities with adverse regulatory actions if they did business with the NRA.
