Pro-Gun Justices Announce Their Agenda While the Supreme Court Bides It Time on Gun Rights

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court deferring deciding on a Second Amendment issue presented by a New York City law that prohibited gun owners from transporting their guns out of the city. Sarat points out that the issue that divided the Court’s conservative justices in this case was not whether to radically expand the protections of the Second Amendment, but when and how to do so.

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United States v. Brown

Docket: 18-5356

Opinion Date: April 24, 2020

Judge: Murphy

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law

In 2007, a jury convicted Brown as a felon in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. 922(g) The Armed Career Criminal Act increases the sentence for felons who possess firearms from a 10-year maximum to a 15-year minimum if the defendant has three prior convictions that qualify as “violent felonies,” 18 U.S.C. 924(a)(2), (e). Sixth Circuit precedent (Nance: then treated Brown’s three Tennessee aggravated-burglary convictions as violent felonies, so that court upheld his 180-month sentence under the Act. Years later the parties agreed that changes to precedent showed that Brown’s burglary convictions did not qualify as violent felonies. The district court granted Brown relief under 28 U.S.C. 2255. He was resentenced and released from prison. The Sixth Circuit reversed the district court’s decision granting Brown relief under section 2255 and remanded for the court to reinstate his original sentence. The court concluded that, following the Supreme Court’s 2018 “Stitt” holding, the Sixth Circuit’s 2007 Nance’s holding that a Tennessee aggravated-burglary conviction categorically qualifies as a violent felony under the Armed Career Criminal Act “is once again the law of this circuit.”

Adams & Boyle, P.C. v. Slatery

Docket: 20-5408

Opinion Date: April 24, 2020

Judge: Karen Nelson Moore

Areas of Law: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Government & Administrative Law

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Governor of Tennessee issued “shelter-in-place” orders. On April 8, 2020, the Governor ordered that “[a]ll healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities ... postpone surgical and invasive procedures that are elective and non-urgent,” until April 30 in order to preserve personal protective equipment and prevent community spread of COVID-19 through nonessential patient-provider interactions. Elective and non-urgent procedures were defined as those that can be delayed because they are not required to provide life-sustaining treatment, to prevent death or risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function, or to prevent rapid deterioration or serious adverse consequences to a patient’s physical condition … as reasonably determined by a licensed medical provider. A Tennessee woman may receive a “medication abortion” within 11 weeks from her last menstrual period or a “procedural abortion” within the first 20 weeks (aspiration or dilation and evacuation), subject to a 48-hour waiting period and in-person visitation requirements. On April 17, the district court enjoined Tennessee from enforcing that ban against doctors performing abortion procedures. The Sixth Circuit affirmed, acknowledging the challenges Tennessee faces in responding to the public health crisis,” but concluding that the “response, in this one respect, unduly curtailed constitutional liberty." The court ordered modification of the injunction so that it prohibits the state from enforcing the ban against plaintiffs to the extent they provide procedural abortions to specific patients, including women who, in the good-faith professional judgment of the provider, will likely be forced to undergo a D&E procedure instead of an aspiration if their procedures are delayed.