Key Points

  • The en banc Third Circuit held that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) violates the Second Amendment as applied to Edward Williams, whose disqualifying conviction is a 2005 Pennsylvania DUI offense punishable by up to five years.
  • The court held that historical tradition supports disarming people who pose a physical danger of misusing arms, not everyone convicted of a crime labeled a felony.
  • The court rejected the government's analogy to historical habitual-drunkard laws, relying on the Supreme Court's conclusion in United States v. Hemani that those laws did not aim to protect the public from violence.
  • The court declined the government's request to remand for factfinding on Williams's dangerousness, holding the government must first offer a historical analogy based on the record of the predicate conviction.
  • The court held that the possibility of discretionary relief under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) did not make the case unripe, writing that its duty is to decide cases on present facts, not future promises.

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held on Oct. 13 that the federal ban on gun possession by people convicted of serious crimes violates the Second Amendment as applied to a man whose record consists of two Pennsylvania drunken-driving offenses from the early 2000s.

The 14-judge en banc court affirmed a declaratory judgment for Edward A. Williams, who had sued the attorney general and other federal officials. Judge Matey wrote the opinion of the court, joined by Judges Hardiman, Bibas, Porter, Phipps, Bove and Mascott. Chief Judge Chagares concurred in part and in the judgment, and Judge Freeman concurred in part.

The ruling holds that the government may not disarm a person under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which bars gun possession by anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, merely because the law labels the conviction a felony. The court held that historical tradition supports disarming people who pose a physical danger of misusing arms, and that the government must tie the person's actual offense to that tradition. The court also refused the Justice Department's request for further factfinding and rejected its argument that a revived process for restoring gun rights made a ruling unnecessary.

Williams was charged in 2000 with driving with a blood alcohol concentration above 0.10% and entered Pennsylvania's Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program. He was convicted in 2005 of driving at the "[h]ighest rate of alcohol," a concentration of 0.16% or higher. Because of the earlier offense, that crime was punishable by up to five years in prison. He served a sentence of 90 days to two years in home confinement.

Williams kept owning guns and worked at a gun store after a background check by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives cleared him. In 2015, his attorney told him the DUI conviction barred him from possessing firearms, and Williams gave up his guns. He then sued in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, where Judge John M. Younge granted him summary judgment.

"The practice of permanently disarming felons only dates back to the 1960s," Matey wrote. The Federal Firearms Act of 1938 reached people convicted of a "crime of violence," the court said, and Congress in 1961 extended the bar to anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year, "abandoning a focus on violence."

The court applied the test of N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court's 2022 decision requiring the government to show that a gun restriction "is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." The court found that the amendment's text covered Williams, a citizen seeking a gun to defend his family at home. The modern felony label, Matey wrote, "is not even close to the proper 'level of generality at which to define [the] historical practice.'"

The court focused "not on Williams's general dangerousness but on whether Williams would have been punished for his conduct because it was thought to correlate with future dangerous use of arms," Matey wrote. A person weaving through Philadelphia on an electric scooter acts dangerously, he reasoned, but "we would be surprised to learn that senseless scootering could trigger the loss of the right to speak."

Williams's 2005 offense required driving with a high alcohol level after a prior DUI. The court said the offense "plainly does not contain threatening or violent elements." The Justice Department compared Williams to people disarmed under historical laws aimed at loyalists, minors, vagrants and "common" or "habitual" drunkards. Addressing only the drunkard laws, the court found the department offered no analysis of their purpose. It cited the Supreme Court's 2026 decision in United States v. Hemani, which concluded that such laws sought "to protect habitual drunkards from themselves and their families from financial devastation."

The court also held that those laws worked in a "materially different" way from § 922(g)(1). Most capped the commitment of habitual drunkards to an asylum, prison or hard labor at a few months or years, and people released were restored to full rights. Williams, the court found, has done nothing violent for more than 20 years and has held the same job for more than three decades. An expert examination found he "has a normal personality, without psychopathology and without addiction or violent tendencies."

"Williams is presently a peaceable citizen, capable of bearing arms consistent with the design of the Second Amendment," Matey wrote.

In supplemental briefing, the Justice Department asked the court to remand for factfinding on whether Williams is physically dangerous. The court declined, holding that the government must first offer a historical analogy based on the record of the prior conviction. "Only after it meets that burden might factfinding be needed," the opinion said.

The government also relied on 18 U.S.C. § 925(c), which lets the attorney general restore gun rights to an applicant who is unlikely to endanger public safety. The court said the provision lay dormant from 1992, when Congress barred the ATF from spending money on such applications, until the attorney general withdrew the ATF's authority in March 2025 and began granting relief to a few applicants. "It is a slow trickle of relief available only upon invitation," Matey wrote.

The government pointed to rules it proposed in August 2026 for relief applications. "Such speculation is simply outside this controversy," Matey wrote. "Our duty is to decide the case based on present facts, not future promises." In a footnote, the court held that Williams presents an actual controversy ripe for decision.

Judge Krause joined Chagares's separate opinion as to its Parts I and II, and Freeman joined it as to Parts I and III. Judges Montgomery-Reeves and Chung joined Freeman's opinion.

The case was argued Feb. 11, 2026. With the affirmance, Judge Younge's judgment declaring § 922(g)(1) unconstitutional as applied to Williams stands.