Background
In March two thousand twenty-four, a grand jury in the District of Maine charged Alberto Rebollar Osorio with possessing a firearm as an alien illegally or unlawfully in the United States in violation of Section nineteen eighty-two of title eighteen of the United States Code. The defendant moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing the statute violated the Second Amendment. The district court granted the motion, finding the defendant was among the people protected by the Amendment and that the government failed to show the statute was consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The court’s reasoning
The court proceeded directly to the second step of the Bruen framework, finding it unnecessary to resolve whether unlawfully present aliens are among the people protected by the Second Amendment. The court held that the government met its burden by demonstrating that Section nineteen eighty-two of title eighteen of the United States Code fits within the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. This tradition includes English common-law practices and colonial measures that conditioned the right to bear arms on allegiance to the sovereign or disarmed groups presumed to owe allegiance to a foreign power. The court rejected the defendant’s arguments that isolated colonial incidents or the specific motivations behind historical laws rendered the government’s evidence insufficient.
What it means going forward
The decision reinstates the criminal indictment against the defendant and clarifies that the First Circuit follows its precedent in United States v. Vizcaino-Peguero regarding the constitutionality of firearm possession bans for unlawfully present aliens.
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