Kenneth Karwacki, a former member of the military, was convicted by a special court-martial of delivering peyote to fellow soldiers and received a bad-conduct discharge. Although the military tribunal classified the offense as a misdemeanor, Karwacki later applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in Wisconsin. The state denied his application under Wis. Stat. §941.29(1m)(b), which bars firearm possession for anyone convicted of a crime elsewhere that would constitute a felony if committed in Wisconsin. Under Wisconsin law, the distribution of peyote is a Class E felony. Karwacki sued in federal district court, arguing that treating his military misdemeanor as a felony for state purposes violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The district court ruled in favor of the state, and Karwacki appealed to the Seventh Circuit.
The Seventh Circuit, writing for the panel, addressed two primary constitutional challenges. First, the court rejected the argument that the Full Faith and Credit Clause prevents Wisconsin from treating Karwacki's military conviction as a felony. The court explained that the Clause mandates that states respect the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of other states, but a federal court-martial is not a judicial proceeding of another state. Citing Derrickson v. Danville, the court noted that the Clause does not apply to federal judgments. Furthermore, Congress has not enacted a statute specifying the collateral consequences of court-martial decisions in state law. The court clarified that the Clause ensures judgments retain their primary effects, such as issue preclusion, but does not prevent states from determining the domestic civil consequences of foreign or federal judgments. The court analogized this to how states determine voting or office-holding eligibility based on out-of-state convictions, citing Rosin v. Monken to show that states may impose registration requirements for sex offenders even if the rendering state did not. Second, the court addressed the Second Amendment challenge. The court held that Wisconsin's statute is not invalid on its face, relying on recent Seventh Circuit decisions, United States v. Prince and United States v. Watson, which rejected facial challenges to federal firearm prohibitions. Regarding the as-applied challenge, the court found that Karwacki's conviction for distributing a prohibited drug presents a credible threat to public safety. Citing United States v. Rahimi, the court affirmed that governments may disarm individuals who present such threats. The court noted that no federal court of appeals has accepted an as-applied challenge to firearm prohibitions by a convicted drug distributor, and it agreed with this consensus.
The decision affirms the enforceability of Wisconsin's firearm prohibition against Karwacki and clarifies that states retain the authority to classify federal military convictions for the purpose of imposing collateral disabilities, such as firearm bans. The ruling reinforces that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not limit state power to define domestic consequences of federal military judgments. Additionally, the decision solidifies the position that individuals convicted of drug distribution cannot successfully challenge firearm bans under the Second Amendment in the Seventh Circuit, leaving open the question of whether as-applied challenges are tenable for other types of convictions.
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