The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a ruling from Idaho District Judge B. Lynn Winmill last year that a domestic protection order against an east Idaho man unfairly violated his second amendment right to bear arms.
Ryan Vandyke had already violated a no-contact order against him when he walked into the Bingham County Courthouse in 2023 ago with a gun in his bag. He was charged with felony illegal gun possession, but successfully argued that Second Amendment rights can still apply even when charged with a crime, and because he wasn’t deemed a credible threat against the protectee, his gun rights shouldn’t have been taken away.
“The whole standard by which courts view issues with regard to whether or not the Second Amendment right to bear arms has been violated, changed as recently as 2022.” explained McKay Cunningham, Professor and Director of the Master of Applied Public Policy Program at the College of Idaho in Caldwell.
Cunningham has previously taught at the University of Idaho Law School and the Concordia School of Law, in addition to practicing as an attorney for nine years.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in a concealed carry gun rights case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen changed how many second amendment cases brought since are argued and interpreted.
“If the conduct that attempts to limit the possession or purchase or use of a firearm violates the plain text of the Second Amendment, then we're done,” Cunningham said of the court’s landmark decision in Bruen. “That's the first step. And the second step is, if you can't tell from the plain text of the Second Amendment, you need to look to a historical analog: what are the traditions in history jurisprudentially with regard to that particular question?”
The Supreme Court used those questions last year in another case similar to the one in Idaho. In United States versus Rahimi, justices ruled there is a well-documented history of keeping certain people from possessing weapons. That ruling was issued shortly after Judge Winmill declared Vandyke’s Second Amendment rights had been violated.
“So the Ninth Circuit says, yeah, Judge Windmill may have been correct, but we think that our analysis of Rahimi shows that it's a little more broad,” Cunningham said.
In the Idaho case, the Ninth Circuit found that just because there is no court order explicitly identifying Vandyke as dangerous did not mean he wasn’t a threat or a potential threat, and that was enough to meet legal tradition for disarmament.
“Given such a strongly implied dangerousness finding by the state court, we see no need to require further documentation,” justices wrote in the ninth circuit ruling, referring back to the protection order against Vandyke issued in Idaho.
Vandyke’s indictment for illegal possession of a firearm is now reinstated and the case will return to Judge Winmill in Idaho District Court.
Cunningham, while hesitant to predict how the Supreme Court would react if Vandyke appealed the ninth circuit ruling, noted that, historically, the high court is more likely to take a case where circuit rulings are at odds, which isn’t the case here.
“The interesting topic, if it is in fact accepted by the Supreme Court, is how to square Bruen and Rahimi in this [Vandyke] case, because the Supreme Court in Rahimi did not specifically answer going back to whether or not a fairly generalized order on domestic violence restricting a person from threatening or harassing a victim, whether that generalized order is enough to justify prohibition of use or possession of a firearm to that individual.”
Illegal possession of a firearm is punishable by fines of up to $250,000 and up to ten years in prison, or up to 15 years if an offender has three or more prior convictions for felony violent crimes or drug trafficking.
