Second Amendment uncertainty continues as SCOTUS GVRs challenge to federal ban on felon gun possession

The Supreme Court issued this short order list this morning without adding adding any new cases to its merits docket via a certiorari grant.  But there was a grant with a vacate and remand (GVR) in a criminal case from the Eleventh Circuit, US v. Dial, which caught my eye because it highlights the continued uncertaintly surrounding Second Amendment challenges to the broad federal criminal prohibition on gun possession by persons with prior felony convictions. 

Dial, decided in this short opinion by a panel in December 2024, involved yet another challenge to “the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which generally prohibits individuals with felony convictions from possessing firearms or ammunition.”  The Eleventh Circuit panel decided the Supreme Court’s Rahimi ruling provided no basics to reconsider prior “precedent [which meant] Dial’s Second Amendment challenge to § 922(g)(1) fails.”

The defendant in Dial sought SCOTUS review via this cert petition filed in February 2025.  The Solicitor General, interestingly, via this brief memorandum filing last month urged the Justices to GVR in Dial because the Court had previously GVRed one of the precedents on which the panel had relied.  In this reply, the defendant urged the Justice to finally take up this long percolating issue.  Here is a small section from the start of the reply:   

[P]ost-Rahimi, the split among the circuits has only hardened. Judges within circuits vehemently disagree. This Court should grant certiorari to resolve the split and restore national harmony in resolution of Second Amendment challenges to the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

The split is deep and the confusion and uncertainty widens…. The Court should end the chaos and grant the petition for a writ of certiorari so that the lower courts and litigants may know the rules of the road for the thousands of “the people” facing prosecution under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) and similar state statutes every year.

But that pitch has not (yet) carried the day. Instead, even though the Eleventh Circuit panel considered Rahimi when decided to reject the Second Amendment clain in Dial, the Supreme Court has ordered that “the case is remanded to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for further consideration in light of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024).”  No matter what this “further consideration” produces, nobody should expect any legal “harmony” unless and until the Justices finally take this up.