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Jefferson Schrader v. Eric Holder, Jr.

Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit · No. 11-5352 · 403 U.S. App. D.C. 284

Decided

👎Unfavorable to gun rights

Statutory and class-wide constitutional challenges rejected and the lifetime ban left in place; the individual as-applied claim was treated as waived.

GunMapUSA assessment of the outcome's direction, not a statement that the court decided rightly or wrongly.

What the court held

Jefferson Schrader, barred for life under 18 U.S.C. section 922(g)(1) because of a 1968 Maryland common-law misdemeanor assault conviction that carried no statutory maximum sentence, argued with the Second Amendment Foundation that the statute does not reach common-law misdemeanants and, alternatively, is unconstitutional as applied to that class. The D.C. Circuit affirmed dismissal, holding that the statute covers such convictions and that disarming common-law misdemeanants as a class is substantially related to the government's interest in preventing gun violence. The court observed that an as-applied challenge tailored to Schrader's own circumstances might well come out differently but treated that argument as waived because it had not been raised in the district court.

Summarized from the court's opinion.

What this case is about

as-applied Second Amendment challenge to the federal firearm ban as applied to a common-law misdemeanant

GunMapUSA summary of the issue, not a quotation from the court.

Key Dates

Read the full opinion The complete text of the court's decision, reproduced in full.

Sources

Summary of public court records. Not legal advice.