Federal Gun Ban on Felons Is Constitutional, Appeals Court Says

The country’s largest federal appeals court on Friday upheld a federal law banning non-violent felons from owning guns, ruling that it doesn’t infringe the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms.

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an en banc decision, said its decision aligns with four other federal circuit courts that have have reached a similar conclusion about the federal ban.

It’s the latest federal appeals court opinion to apply the US Supreme Court’s constitutional test from N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, which requires courts to examine whether a gun restriction has a historic analogue from the time of the founding.

“Legislatures have historically retained the discretion to punish those who commit the most severe crimes with permanent deprivations of liberty, and legislatures could disarm on a categorical basis those who present a ‘special danger of misuse’ of firearms,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote in the majority opinion.

The ruling upholds the criminal conviction of Steven Duarte, who was caught with a pistol in Los Angeles while knowing that he had previously been convicted for five non-violent felonies. The blanket ban on gun ownership for felons has no exceptions and is for life.

A previous three-judge panel for the Ninth Circuit ruled the law unconstitutional in May 2024. The historically liberal-leaning circuit voted to re-hear the case after the US Supreme Court, one month later, clarified its text-and-history test in the U.S. v. Rahimi.

The federal public defender’s office represents Duarte.

The case is U.S. v. Duarte, 9th Cir. en banc, No. 22-50048, 5/9/25.