Firearm Restrictions for Individuals Previously Involuntarily Committed

Facts of the Case

In October 1999, Duy Mai was involuntarily committed for psychiatric treatment by a court in King County, Washington, after he appeared to be a threat to himself and others. He was 17 years old at the time and remained in the hospital for over nine months. After his release, he enrolled in Evergreen Community College, where he earned his GED and ultimately a bachelor's degree in microbiology from the University of Washington. Mr. Mai then enrolled at the University of Southern California, earning a master's degree in microbiology in 2009. He was subsequently employed at various research institutes, which required successfully passing an FBI background check (Mai v. United States, No. C17-0561 RAJ (W.D. Wash. Feb. 8, 2018)). He married and had two children.

In 2014, Mr. Mai tried to purchase a firearm, but both state and federal law prohibited him from doing so. He petitioned the King County Superior Court for relief from disability (RFD), or restoration of his right to own firearms. His petition was granted after he underwent medical and psychological examinations, but a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4) (2012), still prevented Mr. Mai from purchasing a gun because he had previously been committed to a psychiatric hospital. The federal statute outlined two avenues for such individuals to apply for RFD. The first avenue, in which a federally funded program would investigate a person to determine if they were no longer dangerous, was defunded by Congress and eliminated in 1992. The second avenue was through a state program for RFD that was recognized at the federal level. Thirty states had qualifying RFD programs, but Washington did not. Thus, Mr. Mai had no avenue to overcome the federal prohibition on his firearm possession.

On April 11, 2017, Mr. Mai filed a complaint against several government agencies involved in restricting his firearm possession, arguing that continued application of the federal prohibition many years after he was involuntarily committed violated his Second Amendment and Fifth Amendment rights. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed Mr. Mai's Fifth Amendment claim and analyzed his Second Amendment claim. The district court found that Mr. Mai's Second Amendment rights were not violated by the federal prohibition on his gun possession. Mr. Mai then appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Ruling and Reasoning

Like the district court, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit considered whether the Second Amendment required that Mr. Mai be permitted to possess firearms. The court ultimately upheld the federal prohibition on the purchase and possession of firearms by individuals whom a state has found to be mentally ill and dangerous during civil commitment proceedings. In reaching its decision, the Ninth Circuit relied on both previous court holdings and scientific evidence to support Congress's interest in preventing gun violence.

The court cited precedents including District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), in which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that prohibitions on possession of firearms by certain classes of individuals, including those with mental illness, are permissible under the Second Amendment. The court also noted that individuals other than those with mental illness also face firearm bans. These groups include domestic violence misdemeanants (United States v. Chovan, 735 F.3d 1127 (9th Cir. 2013) and felons (United States v. Vongxay, 594 F.3d 1111 (9th Cir. 2010)).

The Ninth Circuit noted that the Third and Sixth Circuit appellate courts encountered similar challenges to firearm prohibitions involving plaintiffs who had been civilly committed and later regained their mental wellbeing. These two courts came to opposite conclusions. In Beers v. Att'y Gen. United States, 927 F.3d 150 (3d Cir. 2019), the Third Circuit ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4) did not place a significant burden on Second Amendment rights, and therefore the court affirmed that the firearm prohibition was constitutional. [Note: The Beers case has since been vacated.] The Sixth Circuit heard a similar complaint in Tyler v. Hillsdale County Sheriff's Department, 837 F.3d 678 (6th Cir. 2016). In that case, the court overturned a lower court's prohibition on firearm possession, concluding that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4) placed a significant burden on Second Amendment rights and that the government had not offered sufficient justification for the necessity of a lifetime ban.

Finally, the Ninth Circuit evaluated the available scientific evidence regarding the relationship between mental illness and gun violence. One cited study, a meta-analysis of suicide risk in individuals released from involuntary commitment, followed subjects for 8.5 years after release from the hospital and found a risk of suicide that was 39 times the expected rate (Harris EC, Barraclough B: Suicide as an outcome for mental disorders: a meta-analysis. Br J Psychiatry 170:205-28, 1997). Although the follow-up period in that study was significantly shorter than the approximately two decades since Mr. Mai's release from civil commitment, the court extrapolated that his risk for suicide would not have returned to zero in the subsequent years. The court stated that scientific evidence provides strong justification for prohibiting previously involuntarily committed individuals from obtaining firearms. Thus, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the ban on Mr. Mai's possession of firearms was a reasonable fit for the government's important interest in reducing gun violence and suicide. The district court's decision was affirmed.