Although the Hobby Lobby case – the one about employer health-insurance coverage for
contraception – has drawn most of the attention at the U.S. Supreme Court recently, the justices issued a decision March 26 on an important issue that also came before the Washington state Legislature this year: protecting victims of domestic violence from gun attacks by their assailants.
The high court rejected a plea from a man convicted of domestic violence in Tennessee who thus lost his right under federal law to possess firearms. He argued that what he pleaded guilty to in his home state didn’t rise to the standard of violence addressed by the federal law. The justices disagreed.
The Legislature strengthened state firearms law in domestic-violence cases this year when it passed House Bill 1840, by Rep. Roger Goodman of Kirkland. That measure largely tracks federal law in prohibiting the possession of firearms by people subject to certain protection and restraining orders, giving local police in Washington state direct authority to enforce those restrictions. That state law also applies in cases of anti-stalking orders, which federal law does not.