This Woman Permanently Lost Her Second Amendment Rights Because She Lied on Her Taxes – By Damon Root (Reason) / Nov 30 2020
Is this the Supreme Court’s next big gun rights case?
Lisa Folajtar pled guilty in 2011 to federal tax fraud, a felony, which is punishable by up to three years in federal prison and a fine of up to $100,000. In the end, she was sentenced to three years’ probation, fined $10,000, and forced to pay the IRS $250,000 in back taxes, interest, and penalties.
She also permanently lost her right to keep and bear arms. According to federal law, it is unlawful “for any person…who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year…[to] possess…any firearm or ammunition.” In other words, a federal statute has seemingly placed the Second Amendment off-limits to all federal felons.
Folajtar has been fighting that particular act of Congress in federal court since 2018. Last week, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected her constitutional challenge.
“Persons who have committed serious crimes forfeit the right to possess firearms much the way they ‘forfeit other civil liberties,'” such as the right the vote, stated the majority opinion of Judge Thomas L. Ambro in Folajtar v. Barr. And in this case, because Congress has designated Folajtar’s crime to be a felony, “we defer to the legislature’s determination.” That deferential approach, Ambro argued, “safeguards the separation of powers by allowing democratically constituted legislatures, not unelected judges, to decide in most cases what types of conduct reflect so serious a breach of the social compact as to justify the loss of Second Amendment rights.”
