Opinion ID: 184831
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The rationality of the felon/misdemeanant distinction

Text: 20 The analysis of standing on this issue is unchanged from our prior opinion. 152 F.3d at 1001-02. On the merits, it is plain that §§ 922(g)(9) and 925(a)(1) impose a harsher sanction on domestic violence misdemeanants than on felons. Whereas gun possession by persons convicted of a crime punishable by at least one year of imprisonment is subject to § 925(a)(1)'s exemption for government-issued firearms, gun possession by domestic violence misdemeanants is not. See §§ 922(g)(1) & (9), 925(a)(1). 21 Such domestic violence misdemeanants are not a suspect class for equal protection analysis, and we assume for the purposes of this section that the regulation does not infringe a fundamental right. (In section IV we address and reject the contention that § 922(g)(9) has been shown on this record to infringe such a right.) Thus, the classification must be upheld against equal protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification. FCC v. Beach Communications, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 313, 113 S.Ct. 2096, 124 L.Ed.2d 211 (1993). 22 Treating misdemeanants more harshly than felons seems irrational in the conventional sense of that term. After all, what is uniform and undisputed is that the presence of some aggravating circumstance (or perhaps the absence of a mitigating one) is necessary to establish a felony. FOP I, 152 F.3d at 1003. In the standard equal protection case the legislature is fully entitled to weigh one characteristic more heavily than another, even though the balance may seem baffling to the court. But here Congress has incorporated a set of classifications made by state legislators who clearly regarded the felons' conduct as calling for greater severity than the misdemeanants'--whether because of moral opprobrium, risk to society, or whatever criteria may have guided their judgment. Yet Congress inverted this adopted classification, imposing a lesser disability on the felons, whom the state legislators had singled out for more severe treatment. Thus the usual proposition that Congress is entitled to address a problem one step at a time is not self-evidently applicable. See id. 23 But on reflection it appears to us not unreasonable for Congress to believe that existing laws and practices adequately deal with the problem of issuance of official firearms to felons but not to domestic violence misdemeanants--adequately at least in the sense of explaining how Congress might have found that as to felons the net benefit of federal prohibition (and non-exemption) fell below the net benefit of prohibition and non-exemption as to misdemeanants. Although state laws do not uniformly ban felons from possessing guns, as we observed in FOP I, see 152 F.3d at 1003, nonlegal restrictions such as formal and informal hiring practices may, as the government argues, prevent felons from being issued firearms covered by § 925(a)(1) in a large measure of the remaining cases. In the absence of evidence negating these propositions, they indicate that there is a reasonably conceivable state of facts under which it is rational to believe that the felon problem makes a weaker claim to federal involvement than the misdemeanant one. When the government is faced with a practical determination like this one, we are obliged to accept rough, even illogical, solutions with an imperfect fit between means and ends. See Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 321, 113 S.Ct. 2637, 125 L.Ed.2d 257 (1993). 24 We note that federal criminal prohibitions in areas traditionally left to the states always entail costs--such as loss of state capacity to experiment (and of others to learn from the experiments), some atrophy of state authority, and loss of the nuance possible where regulation is by governmental institutions closer to the local scene. Thus Congress's self-limitation here may reflect a legitimate accommodation of the inherent interest in minimizing the scope of potentially intrusive federal legislation. This parallels our observation in Blount v. SEC, 61 F.3d 938, 946 (D.C.Cir.1995), on the functions of underinclusiveness analysis in the First Amendment realm. It addresses whether the proffered state interest actually underlies the disputed law; once that is established, there is no occasion for any inquiry into whether some broader restriction on speech would more effectively advance the specified set of legislative aims. 25 We leave for another day the complex interpretive issues posed by the statutory provision relieving an offender of the disability where the underlying conviction has been expunged or set aside, or the offender pardoned, or where civil rights that have been revoked are restored. See 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(33)(B)(ii); FOP I, 152 F.3d at 1003-04. The possible anomalies noted in our earlier opinion and in those of other courts have not been addressed in the briefs and their impact would appear to turn on a detailed analysis of applicable state law and its interaction with federal law. 26 Finally, we reaffirm the determination in our original opinion that a special focus on domestic violence misdemeanants, as opposed to other misdemeanants, was not irrational under the norms of equal protection jurisprudence. See id. at 1002-03.