Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2008

District of Columbia v. Heller

554 U.S. 570 | 128 S. Ct. 2783 | 171 L. Ed. 2d 637 | 2008 U.S. LEXIS 5268

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Takeaway

In short, Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a commonly used firearm, especially a handgun, for self-defense in the home, while recognizing that the right remains subject to many longstanding forms of regulation.

Background

District of Columbia law effectively prohibited most residents from possessing handguns. It barred handgun registration, made possession of an unregistered firearm a crime, and required lawfully owned firearms in the home to be unloaded and disassembled or secured with a trigger lock except in limited circumstances.

Dick Heller, a D.C. special police officer authorized to carry a handgun while on duty, sought to register a handgun for possession in his home. The District denied his application. Heller sued, seeking to invalidate the handgun-registration prohibition, the in-home licensing restriction, and the trigger-lock requirement as applied to functional firearms kept for self-defense.

The federal district court dismissed the complaint. The D.C. Circuit reversed, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess firearms and that the District's handgun ban and requirement that home firearms remain inoperable violated that right. The Supreme Court affirmed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms unconnected with service in an organized militia.

Holding

Yes. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess and carry weapons for lawful purposes, including self-defense, rather than only a right exercised through militia service.

Reasoning

The Court treated the Amendment's operative clause—"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"—as the starting point. In the First, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments, references to a "right of the people" denote individual rights. The phrase therefore strongly indicates that the Second Amendment secures a right held by individual members of the political community, not merely a right held by a state-controlled institution.

The ordinary founding-era meanings of the operative terms supported that conclusion. To "keep Arms" meant to possess weapons, while to "bear Arms" meant to carry weapons for possible offensive or defensive confrontation. Although "bear arms" could sometimes be used in a military sense, the Court concluded that it was not limited to formal service in an organized militia.

Historical sources reinforced the textual reading. The English Bill of Rights, adopted after the Stuart monarchs disarmed political opponents, was understood to protect an individual right to possess arms for defense. Founding-era state constitutional provisions, early treatises, and nineteenth-century cases likewise commonly described arms-bearing as a right of personal defense.

The prefatory militia clause announces a purpose but does not restrict an otherwise clear operative guarantee. At the founding, the militia consisted broadly of able-bodied citizens. Protecting citizens' possession of arms helped preserve an effective citizen militia and guarded against a government that might disarm the people while relying on a standing army or select militia. Thus, the individual-right reading fit rather than contradicted the militia-related purpose.

Issue #2

What is the scope of the Second Amendment right, and whether prior precedent—particularly United States v. Miller—foreclosed an individual-right interpretation.

Holding

The right is not unlimited, but Miller does not foreclose an individual right. The Amendment protects arms commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, while allowing longstanding regulations and restrictions on dangerous and unusual weapons.

Reasoning

The Court stressed that the Second Amendment does not create a right to keep and carry any weapon in any place, in any manner, and for any purpose. It identified as presumptively lawful longstanding restrictions on possession by felons and mentally ill persons, restrictions on carrying firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, and conditions on commercial firearms sales. The list was illustrative, not exhaustive.

The Court read Miller narrowly. Miller held that a short-barreled shotgun had not been shown to have a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia; it did not hold that only militia members possess Second Amendment rights. The Court reasoned that, if Miller had adopted a purely militia-service-based right, it could simply have noted that the defendants were not militiamen rather than focusing on the weapon's character.

Miller was understood to preserve protection for weapons in common use for lawful purposes. That limitation also reflected the historical tradition of regulating or prohibiting dangerous and unusual weapons. The Court therefore distinguished commonly used arms, such as handguns, from weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.

Issue #3

Whether the District's ban on possessing handguns in the home violates the Second Amendment.

Holding

Yes. The District's effective ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment.

Reasoning

Self-defense, particularly defense of oneself, family, and property in the home, is at the core of the Second Amendment right recognized by the Court. The home is where the need for self-defense is most acute.

The law prohibited an entire class of arms—handguns—that Americans overwhelmingly choose for lawful self-defense. The Court rejected the argument that the District could prohibit handguns because residents could possess long guns instead. Handguns are easier to store accessibly, maneuver in close quarters, operate for persons with limited upper-body strength, and use while performing other emergency tasks.

A complete prohibition on the most commonly selected firearm for home defense was an exceptionally severe burden on the protected right. The Court concluded that the ban would fail under any level of scrutiny applicable to enumerated constitutional rights.

Issue #4

Whether the District may require firearms in the home to be unloaded, disassembled, or secured by a trigger lock at all times.

Holding

No. As applied to a firearm kept for immediate self-defense in the home, the trigger-lock requirement is unconstitutional.

Reasoning

By requiring firearms to remain inoperable at all times, the law made it impossible to use them for the core lawful purpose of immediate self-defense. A right to possess a firearm for home defense would be hollow if the government could require the firearm to remain unusable whenever it was needed.

The Court declined to read an unwritten self-defense exception into the statute. Its text listed particular exceptions—for law-enforcement personnel, business premises, and lawful recreational activities—but did not include self-defense. A D.C. appellate decision also indicated that the law prevented residents from using firearms to stop intruders.

Issue #5

Whether the Court should invalidate the District's separate firearm licensing requirement for in-home possession.

Holding

The Court did not decide the general validity of the licensing requirement. It assumed that the District would issue Heller a license if he was qualified and did not enforce the system arbitrarily or capriciously.

Reasoning

Heller did not object in principle to a licensing system, and the District represented that he could obtain a license after registering a handgun if he was not otherwise disqualified. On that understanding, the Court concluded that further review of the licensing regime was unnecessary to resolve Heller's requested relief.

The judgment required the District to allow Heller to register his handgun and to issue an in-home license, assuming he was not disqualified from exercising Second Amendment rights. The Court therefore left broader questions about permissible licensing rules for future cases.

Dissents

Justice Stevens

Reasoning

Justice Stevens argued that the Court asked the wrong question by framing the case as one between an individual and collective right. In his view, individuals may enforce the Second Amendment, but the right protects possession and use of arms for militia-related purposes, not a general right to possess firearms for private self-defense or hunting.

He read the prefatory clause as defining the Amendment's controlling purpose: preserving a well-regulated militia necessary to the security of a free state. The operative phrase "keep and bear Arms," he maintained, is a unitary military expression that describes possessing arms for militia service and using them in military activity.

The drafting history, in his view, confirmed that understanding. The Amendment responded to Anti-Federalist fears that Congress could disarm state militias and create a national standing army. Madison considered proposals that more explicitly protected private possession or self-defense, but his final text instead followed militia-centered proposals from Virginia, New York, and North Carolina.

Justice Stevens maintained that United States v. Miller had already adopted the militia-focused reading. He argued that Miller upheld regulation because the sawed-off shotgun lacked a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, and that lower courts had consistently understood Miller to permit regulation of private civilian gun possession.

The majority's historical sources did not justify overturning that settled understanding. The English Bill of Rights arose in a different constitutional setting, later commentary could not reveal the Framers' original intent, and state cases interpreting differently worded state constitutions provided limited guidance. He would have held that the Second Amendment did not restrict the District's authority to regulate private handgun possession.

Justice Breyer

Reasoning

Justice Breyer joined Justice Stevens's militia-centered interpretation, but also explained why the District's law would be constitutional even if the Second Amendment protected some individual interest in self-defense. The right, he argued, is not absolute and must permit reasonable government regulation serving substantial public-safety interests.

He would have applied an interest-balancing or proportionality inquiry rather than strict scrutiny, rational-basis review, or the majority's categorical approach. Under that framework, a court would assess the burden on protected interests, the law's public benefits, and whether a clearly superior and less restrictive alternative existed, while giving appropriate deference to legislative judgments about empirical matters.

The District had a compelling objective: reducing handgun-related death, injury, suicide, accidental shootings, and violent crime in a densely urban jurisdiction. The Council had relied on evidence linking handguns to homicides and other violent offenses, and contemporary studies did not establish that the Council's prediction that a handgun ban could improve public safety was unreasonable.

The burden on Second Amendment interests was limited in important respects. The law did not materially impair any active militia, and residents could possess rifles and shotguns, obtain ammunition, and engage in lawful recreational firearms activity. Although the ban burdened the use of a handgun for home self-defense, self-defense was at most a subsidiary Second Amendment interest rather than the Amendment's central militia-related concern.

In Justice Breyer's view, no clearly less restrictive measure would achieve the District's specific goal of substantially reducing the number of handguns in the city. Licensing, safety devices, and limits on selected handgun types would leave more handguns available for theft, crime, suicide, or domestic violence. He concluded that the locally tailored ban was a proportionate response to a serious public-safety problem and warned that the majority's rule would unsettle firearms laws nationwide.