The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that protective orders can keep guns out of the hands of people accused of domestic violence, and at least one expert feels that could help a major figure in a separate case — Hunter Biden.
That's according to Eric Ruben, a professor at SMU's Dedman School of Law and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, and Peter Tilem, a criminal defense lawyer and former Manhattan gun prosecutor, who both spoke to Politico for a story published on Friday.
The legal team for President Joe Biden's son was closely monitoring the case United States v. Rahimi heading into Friday's decision, the outlet reported.
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“Since the Founding, the Nation’s firearm laws have included regulations to stop individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” the court’s majority opinion read.
The case marked the high court’s first major gun ruling since 2022, which established a new standard for determining if gun regulations are constitutional. On Friday, the Supreme Court overturned an appellate court's decision that found the Second Amendment protects domestic abusers’ right to own guns.
As Politico noted, the provision in question is a "sister provision" to one that bans drug-users from having guns. The Biden team had hoped — it turns out, unsuccessfully — that the court would've struck down the sibling provision.
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That didn't happen, but Hunter Biden may get a small assist from Chief Justice John Roberts.
Writing in his majority opinion, Roberts said the court was only allowing the removal of guns from people who a judge first deemed a danger to others. He notably avoided scenarios that don't involve a judge's danger determination.
“[W]e reject the Government’s contention that [Zackey] Rahimi may be disarmed simply because he is not ‘responsible,’” Roberts wrote. “'Responsible’ is a vague term. It is unclear what such a rule would entail.”
And therein lies a potential boost for Hunter Biden: The federal law that bans drug-users from having guns "doesn’t necessarily make them a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner or anyone else," Tilem said. That leaves the door open for Biden's team to argue the drug-user prohibition may be unconstitutional altogether.
