Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2016

Caetano v. Massachusetts

577 U.S. 411 | 136 S. Ct. 1027 | 194 L. Ed. 2d 99 | 2016 U.S. LEXIS 1862

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Takeaway

In short, this case confirms that the Second Amendment reaches modern bearable arms and that a State cannot exclude stun guns from protection merely because they were unknown in 1789, are called unusual for that reason, or lack military utility.

Background

Jaime Caetano obtained a stun gun after an abusive former boyfriend assaulted her, despite multiple restraining orders. When he later confronted and threatened her outside her workplace, displaying the stun gun caused him to leave. Police subsequently found the weapon while searching her purse during an unrelated shoplifting investigation. Although they found no evidence connecting her to shoplifting, they arrested her under Massachusetts General Laws ch. 140, §131J, which broadly prohibited private possession of electrical weapons.

Caetano was convicted after a bench trial. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, holding that a stun gun was not a weapon protected by the Second Amendment. It reasoned that stun guns were not in common use when the Second Amendment was adopted, were dangerous and unusual, and were not readily adaptable to military use. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari, vacated the judgment, and remanded.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Second Amendment excludes stun guns because they did not exist or were not in common use when the Amendment was adopted.

Holding

No. A weapon does not fall outside the Second Amendment merely because it is a modern invention that was unknown at the founding.

Reasoning

The Massachusetts court treated the absence of stun guns in 1789 as dispositive. That approach directly conflicted with District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all bearable arms, including arms that did not exist at the time of the founding.

Heller's reference to weapons “in common use at the time” did not limit constitutional protection to weapons common in 1789. In context, the phrase described the arms that citizens historically brought from home when called to militia service; it did not create a founding-era technology requirement.

Issue #2

Whether stun guns may be deemed constitutionally unprotected as “dangerous and unusual” weapons simply because they are thoroughly modern.

Holding

No. The Massachusetts court could not equate a weapon's modern character with constitutional “unusualness.”

Reasoning

Heller recognized a historical limitation concerning “dangerous and unusual weapons.” But the Massachusetts court concluded that stun guns were unusual because they were modern and therefore not in common use at the founding. That conclusion merely repeated the court's erroneous founding-era test.

Because Heller expressly protects bearable arms not in existence at the founding, a weapon's novelty cannot itself establish that it is “unusual” in the constitutional sense. The lower court's dangerous-and-unusual analysis therefore rested on a premise contrary to Heller.

Issue #3

Whether a weapon is protected by the Second Amendment only if it is readily adaptable to military use.

Holding

No. The Second Amendment does not protect only weapons useful in warfare or suitable for militia service.

Reasoning

The Massachusetts court assessed stun guns through a “contemporary lens” and found no evidence that they were readily adaptable to military use. Heller had already rejected the proposition that only weapons useful in warfare receive Second Amendment protection.

The relevant constitutional inquiry could not be reduced to whether a particular arm has military utility. The state court's military-use rationale thus supplied no valid basis for excluding stun guns from Second Amendment coverage.

Concurrences

Justice Alito

Reasoning

Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, agreed that the judgment should be vacated but would have stated more directly that Massachusetts' categorical stun-gun ban violated the Second Amendment. In his view, the majority correctly identified the state court's conflicts with Heller, but the existing record already established the constitutional answer rather than merely requiring reconsideration on remand.

He emphasized that stun guns are plainly bearable arms under Heller's definition: weapons a person carries or holds for offensive or defensive action. Their nonexistence in the eighteenth century was irrelevant, just as the modern origins of electronic communications do not remove them from First Amendment protection.

Justice Alito also explained that the dangerous-and-unusual exception is conjunctive. A weapon cannot be banned merely because it is dangerous, particularly where it belongs to a class of arms commonly used for lawful purposes. Massachusetts' definition of a dangerous weapon was especially overbroad because it would encompass firearms, even though Heller held that firearms cannot be categorically prohibited on that ground.

On unusualness, he maintained that the proper question is whether law-abiding citizens commonly possess stun guns for lawful purposes today. The fact that stun guns are less prevalent than handguns did not make them unusual; hundreds of thousands had been sold to private citizens, and they were lawful in most States. Nor could Massachusetts rely on an alleged lack of military utility, because Heller rejected military usefulness as a condition of protection, and electrical weapons in fact had law-enforcement and military applications.

Justice Alito grounded this conclusion in self-defense. Caetano used a nonlethal weapon to deter an abusive former partner after restraining orders had failed. He rejected the suggestion that she could simply have carried a firearm or pepper spray: the availability of another weapon does not excuse a ban on a protected arm, and the State should not force a person who is unwilling to use deadly force to choose between self-defense and conscience.