Opinion ID: 2762420
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Step One: Scope of the Second Amendment

Text: Greeno’s first step asks “whether the challenged law burdens conduct that falls within the scope of the Second Amendment right, as historically understood.” 679 F.3d at 518. We look at whether the challenged law “will survive Second Amendment challenge because [it] regulate[s] activity falling outside the terms of the right as publicly understood when the Bill of Rights was ratified.” Ibid. Greeno appears to place the burden on the state to establish that the challenged statute regulates activity falling outside the scope of the Second Amendment as it was understood in 1791. See ibid. (“If the [g]overnment demonstrates that the challenged statute ‘regulates activity falling outside the scope of the Second Amendment right as it was understood at the relevant historical moment . . . then the analysis can stop there . . . . If the government cannot establish this[,] . . . then there must be a second inquiry into the strength of the government’s justification for restricting or regulating the exercise of Second Amendment rights.’”) (quoting Ezell v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d 684, 702-03 (7th Cir. 2011)).
Both Tyler and the government marshal historical sources and secondary historical scholarship to discuss whether the conduct proscribed by § 922(g)(4)—possession of a firearm by a person previously committed to a mental institution—fell within the historical scope of the Second Amendment. Tyler relies on the English Bill of Rights, which provided: “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defense suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.” 1 W. & M., c. 2, § 7, in 3 Eng. Stat. at Large 441 (1689); see Heller, 554 U.S. at 592–93. Heller explains the purpose of this provision: “Between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution, the Stuart Kings Charles II and James II succeeded in using select militias loyal to them to 8 See, e.g., Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II), 670 F.3d 1244, 1282 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting) (“Heller and McDonald didn’t just reject interest balancing. The Court went much further by expressly rejecting [the dissent’s] intermediate scrutiny approach, disclaiming cost-benefit analysis, and denying the need for empirical inquiry. By doing so, the Court made clear . . . that strict and intermediate scrutiny are inappropriate.”) (emphasis added). No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 13 suppress political dissidents, in part by disarming their opponents.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 592. As a result of these experiences, Englishmen “obtained an assurance from William and Mary, in the Declaration of Right (which was codified as the English Bill of Rights), that Protestants would never be disarmed.” Id. at 593. It is unclear, however, whether the provision in the English Bill of Rights limiting the right to that “allowed by law” encompassed individuals previously committed to a mental institution. Tyler also relies heavily on legal commentary by William Blackstone, “whose works . . . constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation.” Id. at 593–94. Tyler quotes Blackstone as recognizing the right to arms as “a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.” 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries . Blackstone recognized that restraints on this right, as well as other fundamental English rights, must be “so gentle and moderate . . . that no man of sense or probity would wish to see them slackened.” Ibid. Under this scheme, individuals were “restrained from nothing, but what would be pernicious either to ourselves or our fellow-citizens.” Ibid. Blackstone spoke approvingly on prohibitions on unlawful hunting or appearing armed in certain places “with the face blacked or with other disguise, and being armed with offensive weapons, to the breach of the public peace and the terror of his majesty’s subjects.” 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries  (discussing the statute 1 Hen. VII., c. 7 and the statute 9 Geo. I., c. 22). Similarly, Blackstone described how the “offence of riding or going armed, with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land, and is particularly prohibited by the statute of Northampton, 2 Edw. III, c. 3.” Id. at . Blackstone does not resolve whether a mental-institution prohibition such as the one at issue here would have been considered a “due restriction.” Other historical sources cited by Tyler are no more helpful. Under the Militia Act of 1662, “any person or persons” who were judged “dangerous to the Peace of the Kingdome” could be disarmed. 13 & 14 Car. 2, c. 3, § 1 (1662) (Eng.). But we already know from Heller that the right to bear arms, both now and as understood in 1791, did not extend to certain classes of people. Tyler also cites ratification history, but Heller explained that the ratification debate No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 14 over the right to keep and bear arms was not over the nature of the right but “over whether it needed to be codified in the Constitution.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 598.
Greeno places the burden on the government to establish that regulated conduct falls outside the scope of the Second Amendment as understood in 1791. 679 F.3d at 518. The government relies on historical sources similar to those cited by Tyler, but they too are of limited helpfulness. The government, also invoking ratification history, relies on “a proposal offered by the Pennsylvania anti-federalist faction at the Pennsylvania Convention.” Appellee Br. 17. Heller described this proposal as “highly influential.” 554 U.S. at 604. Under this proposal: The people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own State, or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals[.] The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of the State of Pennsylvania to Their Constituents, 1787, reprinted in 2 Bernard Schwartz, The Bill of Rights, A Documentary History 665 (1971) (emphasis added). This, too, simply raises the question of which individuals presented a “real danger of public injury.” The government also cites Samuel Adams’s proposal at the Massachusetts ratifying convention, which was also discussed in Heller. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 604–05. Adams recommended “that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress . . . to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” 2 Schwartz, The Bill of Rights, 675, 681 (emphasis added). But Heller already established that the Second Amendment applies, at the very least, to “law-abiding, responsible citizens.” 554 U.S. at 635. The government’s brief discussion of historical scholarship is no more helpful. The government asserts that most “scholars of the Second Amendment agree that the right to bear arms was tied to the concept of a virtuous citizenry.” Appellee Br. 18 (quoting United States v. Yancey, 621 F.3d 681, 684–85 (7th Cir. 2010) (per curiam)). Whether we label the class of citizens entitled to Second Amendment protection as “responsible,” “peaceable,” or “virtuous,” No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 15 we are no closer to determining whether individuals previously institutionalized were counted in that class.
Recourse to tradition is not much more helpful, for “legal limits on the possession of firearms by the mentally ill . . . are of 20th Century vintage.” United States v. Skoien (Skoien II), 614 F.3d 638, 641 (7th Cir. 2010) (en banc). Section 922(g)(4) “was not enacted until 1968.” Ibid.; see Gun Control Act of 1968, Pub. L. No. 90-618, 82 Stat. 1213, 1220. This law does not appear to rest on much historical foundation. “One searches in vain through eighteenth-century records to find any laws specifically excluding the mentally ill from firearms ownership.” Carlton F.W. Larson, Four Exceptions in Search of A Theory: District of Columbia v. Heller and Judicial Ipse Dixit, 60 HASTINGS L.J. 1371, 1376 (2009). Professor Larson has concluded that “[s]pecific eighteenth-century laws disarming the mentally ill . . . simply do not exist.” Id. at 1378.9 The only more modern precedent that Professor Larson uncovered was the Uniform Fire Arms Act of 1930, which “prohibited delivery of a pistol to any person of ‘unsound mind.’” Id. at 1376 (quoting Handbook of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and Proceedings of the Fortieth Annual Conference 565 (1930)). We are not aware of any other historical source that suggests that the right to possess a gun was denied to persons who had ever been committed to a mental institution, regardless of time, circumstance, or present condition.10 9 The government argues otherwise. See Appellee Br. 18. (“Historical sources further show that the colonial public did not view persons with a history of mental disturbance as being among those who could bear arms . . . .”). For this claim, the government relies on United States v. Emerson, 270 F.3d 203, 226 n.21 (5th Cir. 2001). Emerson, in turn, relies on Robert Dowlut, The Right to Arms: Does the Constitution or the Predilection of Judges Reign?, 36 OKLA L. REV. 65, 96 (1983). This article states: “Colonial and English societies of the eighteenth century . . . have excluded infants, idiots, lunatics, and felons [from possessing firearms].” The Dowlut article, for its part, relies on T. Cooley, A Treatise on Constitutional Limitations 57 (7th ed. 1903). But the Cooley treatise simply provides no support for the proposition that the government now advances—that eighteenth-century America excluded “lunatics” from possessing firearms. In this way, one incorrect citation has begotten another. The portion of Cooley’s 1903 treatise cited by Dowlut does not address firearms at all but refers only to “[c]ertain classes [that] have been almost universally excluded” from “the elective franchise.” Ibid. (emphasis added). Other courts, like the government, have mistakenly relied on the Dowlut article for the proposition that eighteenth-century America excluded “lunatics” from possessing firearms. See, e.g., State v. Jorgenson, 312 P.3d 960, 966 (Wash. 2013). This citation-chain error has also been identified by the Oregon Supreme Court. See State v. Hirsch, 114 P.3d 1104, 1132 n.47 (Or. 2005). 10 Mental institutions did not even exist in colonial America until the late eighteenth century. According to one source, “[T]he first asylum for the exclusive reception of the insane was opened [in 1772,] two decades later” No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 16 We need not reinvent the wheel and justify with historical reasoning § 922(g)(4)’s prohibition on possession of firearms by the mentally ill. So much we may take for granted. Heller has already sanctioned the “longstanding prohibitio[n] on the possession of firearms by . . . the mentally ill” as permissible. 554 U.S. at 626. The Court did not directly support this statement with citations. Justice Breyer suggested that the Court’s statement amounted to “judicial ipse dixit.” Id. at 722 (Breyer, J., dissenting). The Court, in turn, responded that “there will be time enough to expound upon the historical justifications for the exceptions we have mentioned if and when those exceptions come before us.” Id. at 635 (majority opinion). The problem, as noted, is that the class of individuals constituting those ever previously mentally institutionalized is not identical to the class of individuals presently mentally ill. Ultimately, the government cannot establish that § 922(g)(4) regulates conduct falling outside the scope of the Second Amendment as it was understood in 1791. We cannot conclude, then, that the regulated activity is “categorically unprotected.” Greeno, 679 F.3d at 518. History, text, and tradition, considered alone, are inconclusive.11 Because the government has not met its burden, we conclude that the Second Amendment as understood in 1791 extended to at least some individuals previously committed to mental institutions. We proceed, therefore, to Greeno’s second step. C. Step Two: Applying the Appropriate Level of Scrutiny Under Greeno, if the government cannot meet its burden of establishing that the regulated conduct fell outside the scope of the Second Amendment as historically understood in 1791, then the court must proceed to a second step. 679 F.3d at 518. The second step analyzes “the strength of the government’s justification for restricting or regulating the exercise of Second Amendment rights.” Ibid. Courts must “appl[y] the appropriate level of scrutiny.” Ibid. than when “the first general hospital [was] established.” Albert Deutsch, The Mentally Ill in America: A History of their Care and Treatment from Colonial Times 40 (2d ed. 1940). Thus, asking whether firearm possession by persons previously committed to a mental institution fell within the historical scope of the Second Amendment may simply be a futile question. Mental institutions, for the most part, did not emerge in America until after the adoption of the Second Amendment. 11 On this point, we agree with the district court: “The [c]ourt agrees that the historical evidence cited by Heller and Defendants does not directly support the proposition that persons who were once committed due to mental illness are forever ineligible to regain their Second Amendment rights.” Tyler v. Holder, No. 1:12-CV-523, 2013 WL 356851, at  (W.D. Mich. Jan. 29, 2013). No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 17 1. Intermediate Scrutiny or Strict Scrutiny? Whether courts should apply intermediate scrutiny or strict scrutiny is an open question in this circuit. Greeno itself concerned a Second Amendment challenge to the dangerousweapon enhancement in § 2D1.1(b)(1) of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. See id. at 516–21. The Greeno court concluded that the dangerous-weapon enhancement was consistent with the historical understanding of the Second Amendment because the right to bear arms did not extend to “individuals engaged in criminal activity,” id. at 519, or to “possession of weapons for unlawful purposes,” id. at 520. The court in Greeno decided only the question asked in the first step of its newly announced test. See id. at 520 n.2. The Greeno court expressly reserved the question of what is “the appropriate level of scrutiny to apply to post-Heller Second Amendment challenges under the second prong.” Ibid. a Although we might prefer to avoid a scrutiny-based approach altogether, see Heller, 554 U.S. at 634–35, Greeno now compels us to wade “into the ‘levels of scrutiny’ quagmire.” Skoien II, 614 F.3d at 642. The traditional levels of scrutiny are rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny. See Heller, 554 U.S. at 634. The Supreme Court in Heller ruled out the possibility that rational-basis review applies to Second Amendment challenges: “If all that was required to overcome the right to keep and bear arms was a rational basis, the Second Amendment would be redundant with the separate constitutional prohibitions on irrational laws, and would have no effect.” Id. at 628 n.27. Our choice, then, is between intermediate scrutiny and strict scrutiny. Both tests are “quintessential balancing inquiries that focus ultimately on whether a particular government interest is sufficiently compelling or important to justify an infringement on the individual right in question.” Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II), 670 F.3d 1244, 1281 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). Under intermediate scrutiny, a challenged law “must be substantially related to an important governmental objective.” Clark v. Jeter, 486 U.S. 456, 461 (1988). Strict scrutiny, in apparent contrast, requires the government to show that a challenged law “furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.” No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 18 Citizens United v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 558 U.S. 310, 340 (2010) (citation omitted). Before determining which standard is most appropriate, a few caveats are in order. First, we recognize that this decision—intermediate or strict?—is likely more important in theory than in practice. We are skeptical of ascribing too much significance to the difference between an “important” or “significant” interest and a “compelling” interest. Justice Blackmun, for example, was never “able fully to appreciate just what a ‘compelling state interest’ is.” Ill. State Bd. of Elections v. Socialist Workers Party, 440 U.S. 173, 188 (1979) (Blackmun, J., concurring). He felt that if “compelling interest” meant “‘incapable of being overcome’ upon any balancing process, then, of course, the test merely announces an inevitable result, and the test is no test at all.” Ibid. Both intermediate scrutiny and strict scrutiny involve similar balancing tests. Second, intermediate and strict scrutiny are not binary poles in the area of heightened scrutiny. These familiar tests can take on many names and versions. “[I]t bears mention that strict scrutiny and intermediate scrutiny can take on different forms in different contexts that are sometimes colloquially referred to as, for example, strict-scrutiny-light or intermediate-scrutinyplus or the like.” Heller II, 670 F.3d at 1277 n.8 (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). For example, in a campaign-finance case, the Court said a contribution limit would survive review if the government showed that the regulation was “closely drawn to match a sufficiently important interest.” Nixon v. Shrink Mo. Gov’t PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 387–88 (2000). In another case, the Court reviewed a gender-based classification under “skeptical scrutiny” and “heightened review.” United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 531, 533 (1996). Whether courts apply heightened scrutiny or a lighter version of that scrutiny, the underlying approach remains the same: it entails assessing means and ends and costs and benefits. With these cautions in mind, we proceed to determine the appropriate standard. b The government maintains that intermediate scrutiny is the appropriate level of scrutiny to apply. It offers two reasons. First, it argues that a “more demanding standard would be inconsistent with Heller’s recognition that ‘longstanding prohibitions on the possession of No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 19 firearms by felons and the mentally ill’ are ‘presumptively lawful.’” Appellee Br. 19 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626, 627 n.26). Second, the government notes that other courts of appeals have generally applied intermediate scrutiny. i The government’s first argument is that Heller’s exceptions are inconsistent with strict scrutiny. Heller describes the prohibition on firearm possession by the mentally ill as “presumptively lawful.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 626, 627 n.26. The government at oral argument stated that this language must indicate that strict scrutiny is inappropriate because if a law is subject to strict scrutiny, the government reasons, then it is not presumptively lawful. There are several problems with this logic. First, the government reads Heller’s language to mean that courts, when analyzing the constitutionality of Heller’s exceptions, must begin their analysis by presuming that such exceptions are lawful. This cannot be correct because if that were the case, then courts would apply something akin to rational basis—an option that Heller forecloses. Heller, 554 U.S. at 628 n.27. The government argues in favor of intermediate scrutiny, but intermediate scrutiny does not involve applying a presumption of constitutionality. Heller’s “presumptively lawful” language does not suggest that a presumption of constitutionality attaches to the Heller exceptions. An equally valid, if not better, reading of the language is that the Court presumed that it would find the Heller exceptions constitutional after applying some analytic framework.12 We do not read Heller’s “presumptively lawful” language to suggest anything about the level of scrutiny, if any, that courts should apply when evaluating Second Amendment challenges. ii The strongest argument in favor of intermediate scrutiny is that other circuits have adopted it as their test of choice. The government correctly notes that circuits have generally 12 Other courts have recognized that Heller’s “presumptively lawful” language is simply ambiguous. See NRA v. ATF (NRA I), 700 F.3d 185, 196 (5th Cir. 2012) (“It is difficult to discern whether [Heller’s exceptions], by virtue of their presumptive validity, either (i) presumptively fail to burden conducted protected by the Second Amendment, or (ii) presumptively trigger and pass constitutional muster under a lenient level of scrutiny.”); Marzzarella, 614 F.3d at 91 (“We recognize the phrase ‘presumptively lawful’ could have different meanings under newly enunciated Second Amendment doctrine.”). No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 20 applied intermediate scrutiny in Second Amendment challenges. A closer look, however, reveals that the circuits’ actual approaches are less neat—and far less consistent—than that. The First Circuit applied a form of intermediate scrutiny to a “categorical ban on gun ownership by a class of individuals,” which required a “strong showing, necessitating a substantial relationship between the restriction and an important governmental object.” United States v. Booker, 644 F.3d 12, 25 (1st Cir. 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Second Circuit adopted “some form of heightened scrutiny . . . less than strict scrutiny” to laws not burdening the “‘core’ protection of self-defense in the home.” Kachalsky, 701 F.3d at 93–94. The Third Circuit has applied intermediate scrutiny when the “burden imposed by the law does not severely limit the possession of firearms,” but recognized that the “Second Amendment can trigger more than one particular standard of scrutiny.” Marzzarella, 614 F.3d at 97. The Fourth Circuit employs a hybrid approach, applying intermediate scrutiny to laws burdening the right to bear arms “outside of the home” but applying strict scrutiny to laws burdening the “core right of self-defense in the home.” United States v. Masciandaro, 638 F.3d 458, 470–71 (4th Cir. 2011); accord Woollard, 712 F.3d at 876; United States v. Chester (Chester II), 628 F.3d 673, 683 (4th Cir. 2010) (“[W]e conclude that intermediate scrutiny is more appropriate than strict scrutiny for Chester and similarly situated persons.”). The Fifth Circuit has also adopted a multi-tiered approach in which “the appropriate level of scrutiny depends on the nature of the conduct being regulated and the degree to which the challenged law burdens the right.” NRA v. ATF (NRA I), 700 F.3d 185, 195 (5th Cir. 2012) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Seventh Circuit has followed a number of different approaches, depending on the panel. Recently, it applied “a more rigorous showing than [intermediate scrutiny], if not quite ‘strict scrutiny.’” Ezell v. City of Chicago, 651 F.3d 684, 708 (7th Cir. 2011). In general, the court said that a “severe burden on the core Second Amendment right” requires “an extremely strong public-interest justification and a close fit between the government’s means and its end,” whereas “laws restricting activity lying closer to the margins of the Second Amendment right, No. 13-1876 Tyler v. Hillsdale Cnty. Sheriff’s Dep’t, et al. Page 21 laws that merely regulate rather than restrict, and modest burdens on the right may be more easily justified.” Ibid. Previously, the full court, sitting en banc, accepted the government’s concession that the court should apply intermediate scrutiny rather than rational-basis review and asked whether the challenged law was “substantially related to an important governmental objective.” Skoien II, 614 F.3d at 641. But see id. at 647 (Sykes, J., dissenting) (arguing that the court “sends doctrinal signals that confuse rather than clarify”). Judge Posner, taking a different approach still, analyzed a challenged law “not based on degrees of scrutiny, but on Illinois’s failure to justify the most restrictive gun law of any of the 50 states.” Moore, 702 F.3d at 941. The Ninth Circuit has also followed various approaches. In a 2013 case, the court held that intermediate scrutiny applies to a Second Amendment challenge to a law burdening “conduct falling within the scope of the Second Amendment’s guarantee.” United States v. Chovan, 735 F.3d 1127, 1136 (9th Cir. 2013). Three months later, the court clarified that intermediate scrutiny applied only because the conduct fell within the scope of the Second Amendment but “outside [its] core.” Peruta, 742 F.3d at 1168 n.15. The court also clarified that “[i]ntermediate scrutiny is not appropriate, however, for cases involving the destruction of a right