A ‘deadly’ court ruling on domestic violence

How race and identity are shaping politics, policy and power.

Feb 17, 2023 View in browser   By Jesús A. Rodríguez With help from Jesse Naranjo, Brakkton Booker, Ella Creamer, Rishika Dugyala, Ben Weyl and Teresa Wiltz  POLITICO illustration/Photo courtesy of the Texas Advocacy Project What’s good, mi gente! This week, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro announced he will issue a reprieve every time a death penalty warrant comes across his desk, the Environmental Protection Agency promises accountability after a toxic disaster in Appalachia, and Republican former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley makes an opening case for her presidential bid. First, though, we turn to a court decision with chilling implications for domestic violence survivors. When Texas resident Zackey Rahimi asked a federal appellate court to review his conviction for violating a federal law that prohibits those under protective orders for domestic abuse from owning guns, he made a sweeping claim: that the law violated his Second Amendment rights. That argument was bogus, a three-judge panel said last summer. But now, the same court agrees with him — and has vacated his conviction after invalidating a federal law that barred alleged domestic abusers like Rahimi, who stands accused of assaulting his girlfriend, from possessing firearms. Advocates said the law, which can no longer be enforced in Texas, Louisiana or Mississippi, was crucial in keeping victims safe. So what changed? In a word: the Supreme Court. Just two weeks after the denial of Rahimi’s appeal last summer, the nation’s highest court decided its first major gun case in a decade. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority held that individuals have a broad right to carry guns outside their homes, striking down a New York law that required them to show cause in order to receive open-carry permits. But the decision, which came six weeks after a white supremacist opened fire against Black shoppers in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket, had much more far-reaching implications, as seen in Rahimi’s case. After Bruen, the previous 5th Circuit panel withdrew its decision and ordered an expedited review of the case. The new three-judge panel — composed of two Trump appointees and one Reagan appointee — now finds that Bruen “fundamentally changed our analysis of laws that implicate the Second Amendment … rendering our prior precedent obsolete.” Under that new precedent, Judge Cory Wilson wrote, the government has the burden of showing that its regulation “fits within our Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” at the time of the Constitution’s ratification in 1788. Victims are remembered as gun violence survivors gather in front of the Supreme Court ahead of oral argument in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, Nov. 3, 2021, in Washington, D.C. | Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Giffords Law Center This means alleged domestic abusers could get to keep their guns even if courts find that they pose a credible threat to their partners. (Attorney General Merrick Garland has also vowed to challenge the decision.) Moreover, advocates for survivors of domestic violence worry that the decision could put guns back in the hands of those who had already relinquished them. “It’s like a rupture in the dam,” said Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.) at a recent press conference on the steps of the Capitol. “The decision could do a lot of damage if this rift starts to open.” One study has found that a victim’s risk of being killed by their partners is five times higher when the batterer has access to a gun, and Black Americans and Native Americans are disproportionately affected by domestic violence across the country. To break down how this is affecting victims of domestic abuse on the ground, The Recast spoke to Heather Bellino, CEO of the Texas Advocacy Project, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services to survivors and maintains a legal help line. ◆◆◆ This interview has been edited for length and clarity. THE RECAST: Could you start by breaking down why people accused of domestic violence once had to relinquish their firearms? BELLINO: It looks different depending on where you are. It’s a complicated conversation, especially here in Texas. It shouldn’t be easy to say to somebody, “Hey, we’re taking your guns for various and sundry reasons.” But if it’s been proven in a civil court that you are a danger to another person, and that you have been shown to be a danger and therefore a protective order was granted, common sense also says you shouldn’t have a gun, because guns are used to kill. And whether you pull the trigger on the victim or not, it’s used for coercion and control and for fear and intimidation. Even just the very act of having one at all, means that you’re going to have more power and control over your victim. THE RECAST: How will Rahimi affect domestic violence cases on the ground? What options do survivors still have in practice? BELLINO: The effects of the Rahimi ruling will have an immediate deadly impact on the outcomes of domestic violence [cases]. Right now, we are looking at whether or not we should even add relinquishment into a protective order, what it means for protective orders that have already been given, and the advocates in the field that we work with have started to call, so that they understand how to best describe this to survivors that they’re working with, and how to still find the language to encourage people to use the justice system to get a protective order. Because it does show a reduction in future violence, if you have a protective order. There is still an option to get a protective order. And there are still options to put safeties in there, such as not going near the victim, not calling them and harassing them, not threatening their neighbors, communicating with them in any way. There are safeties that can be put in place when there’s a child exchange. Once they’re in the protective order, and it’s agreed upon, if they break anything that’s in that protective order, it’s criminally enforceable, so they can be arrested. It does still have criminal consequences if it’s broken. It is still a protection. But yes, without being able to put guns on it, the implication is that batterers will still have a weapon that is used to kill.   Every week, we sit down with diverse and influential characters who are shaking up politics. Who should we profile next? Let us know. Email us at therecast@politico.com.   THE RECAST: Has this changed the legal advice you’re giving out, in practical terms? Is there still an incentive to get a protective order? BELLINO: I think there’s less of an incentive, but that doesn’t mean that there’s less of a reason to do it. On a protective order, there are a lot of things that you can list specifically that the survivor has identified as something that will make them more safe. Some people that are coming out of abusive relationships still share their custody of their children. It might be that drop-offs have to be in a safe location. And we advise as to the options that are available, but we look to survivors to determine what they believe is best for them. And oftentimes, if there’s guns in the house they may need to go. Unfortunately, that’s no longer the case. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) speaks during a news conference about gun violence outside the U.S. Capitol, Feb. 8, 2023, in which lawmakers criticized the recent 5th U.S. Circuit decision. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images A survivor might not be incentivized as much to get a protective order, because they’re throwing their hands up in the air and saying, “Well, does [the order] really matter if he still has his gun? What is this piece of paper going to do?” Yes, he may still have his gun. But if we put “You can’t come within 200 yards of the survivor,” and he breaks that, it’s still a criminally enforceable order. There are still protections there, so I don’t want to discourage anybody from getting a protective order. And at the same time, I do know that without guns on those orders, they are less safe. THE RECAST: You also touched on how having a gun in the home can shift the power dynamics between abusers and survivors. Could you explain how gun ownership and domestic violence are related? BELLINO: When there’s a gun in the home, mortality increases. Guns are used to shoot and kill and maim and all those things, but domestic violence, at its core, is power and control. And if you have a gun, you can exert a higher amount of power over somebody else, and therefore more control over them. And so you are absolutely more likely to die when there are guns in the house. Just in 2020, 183 women in Texas were killed by an intimate partner. Sixty-seven percent of those murders — 67 percent — were by firearms. That’s a huge statistic. Women in Texas are also 24 percent more likely to be murdered with a gun than women in other states. That statistic is predictable and preventable. THE RECAST: Given that it’s early on in the decision’s aftermath, how have you been gathering feedback about the case’s impact? BELLINO: [In addition to] a whole legal department where we provide free civil legal remedies for victims of domestic abuse, dating abuse, sexual assault, stalking, human trafficking, … we also have an advocacy and outreach department that’s extremely robust. We’re building relationships with the systems that intersect with survivors. We receive a lot of our referrals from shelters throughout the state, health care providers, independent school districts, [places] of that nature. It’s the people that are working directly with survivors in the field that we want to hear from. If you’re in a shelter, and you have an advocate that works there, they usually work with you on getting to resources like us. So when they’re talking to survivors, are [advocates] feeling like, “I don’t even know what to tell a survivor. I don’t know if I can tell them that there’s some safeties available to them?” Have survivors come back because now their batterer just got their guns back? We don’t know if they’re getting their guns back yet. We don’t know what’s actually happening out there. The Texas Advocacy Project distributes backpacks and school supplies to children of survivors in domestic violence shelters across Texas, according to its website. | Courtesy of the Texas Advocacy Project So we’ve invited all of these people that work at those organizations that intersect with these survivors to come to us [at a town hall next week] and say what really is happening here. How can we formulate our response to best holistically support survivors? THE RECAST: What’s next for the Rahimi case and for domestic violence advocacy? BELLINO: There’s a possibility that they could do an en banc hearing, where [they] hear it all again, and every [judge] has to give an opinion, or it could go to the Supreme Court. There’s a couple of other cases that are similar to Rahimi but not Rahimi that people are working on amicus briefs [for] right now. So there’s going to be a lot more going on, and we’re going to continue to test this to see if we can go back to increased protections for survivors. And [there is a] probability of the Supreme Court considering this issue because it overturns that federal law. It’s a federal law that you have to give up your guns if there was a protective order against you. If it upholds the ruling, it would become binding and precedent throughout the nation. I don’t know what we’re going to do, to be honest. We haven’t done enough groundwork to figure out what will have the best outcome for survivors. [But] we are working with survivors, advocates, legal teams here in the state of Texas and across the nation to have robust discussions to make sure that we are all doing the very best on behalf of survivors — to keep them alive. ◆◆◆ That’s all for this week. We’re sending you into the long weekend with a few reading, listening and watching recommendations below. Sen. 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