The Supreme Court ruled Friday that a federal law barring Americans under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms does not violate the Second Amendment.

“Since the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 8-1 majority. ” As applied to the facts of this case, [the current law] fits comfortably within this tradition.”

The case was brought by Zacky Rahimi, who was accused of hitting his girlfriend and firing his gun at a witness in a Fort Worth, Texas, parking lot in December 2019.

Rahimi’s girlfriend obtained a protective order against him in February 2020, after Rahimi threatened to shoot her, according to the Justice Department,

Eleven months later, Rahimi’s apartment was searched by police and firearms were found, along with a copy of the restraining order. 

Rahimi pleaded guilty to violating the federal gun law, but argued that the restriction violated his Second Amendment rights, setting the case in motion. 

Friday’s decision reversed a 2023 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel ruled that the restraining order ban failed a test set by the high court’s landmark 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, which requires gun laws to be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The Supreme Court has in recent decades been at the forefront of expanding gun rights — generating speculation in the runup to Friday’s ruling that it might strike down bans on ownership by domestic abusers and other less-favored classes, such as drug users.

In 2008, the justices ruled in Heller v. District of Columbia that the Second Amendment provides for an individual right to own guns, invalidating a handgun ban in the nation’s capital. In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in the Bruen case that people also have a right to carry guns outside their homes, striking down New York’s state law that required an applicant to show special need for a permit to do so.

In his opinion, Roberts wrote that the 5th Circuit had wrongly interpreted the Bruen decision to require a “historical twin” to the restraining order law, rather than a “historical analogue.”

“Rather than consider the circumstances in which [the law] was most likely to be constitutional, the panel instead focused on hypothetical scenarios where [the law]  might raise constitutional concerns,” the chief justice wrote. “That error left the panel slaying a straw man.”

The lone dissenter was Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the opinion in the Bruen case.

“[T]his Court’s directive was clear [in Bruen],” Thomas wrote. “A firearm regulation that falls within the Second Amendment’s plain text is unconstitutional unless it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue.”

Friday’s decision followed the court ruling last week to overturn a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, an accessory that allows for more rapid firing of semi-automatic rifles.

In that case, the justices concluded that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) had overstepped its authority by declaring bump stocks to be illegal machine guns without the consent of Congress.

President Biden applauded the Supreme Court’s decision Friday, saying in a statement: “No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun.”

“As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on critical protections, just as they have for the past three decades,” the 81-year-old added.

Biden’s own son Hunter, 54, tried to fight federal gun charges in Delaware, on which he was convicted June 11, by arguing that it was unconstitutional to bar drug users from owning guns. It is possible the first son will raise the matter again as part of an appeal.