U.S. Supreme Court Lets State Court Ruling Stand On Maryland Gun Seizure Law

By Maryland Matters Staff, Maryland Matters

February 28, 2026

The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Maryland Supreme Court ruling that said the state is justified in banning gun possession by people who have been sentenced to two years or more in prison, whether or not the crime they committed was a felony or crime of violence.

The high court, without comment, declined to hear an appeal from Robert L. Fooks, a Wicomico County man whose guns were confiscated by Fruitland Police in 2021 during an investigation of 13 gun thefts. The state said it took the guns because Fooks had been convicted of a disqualifying crime — “constructive criminal contempt” for failure to pay child support — in 2017.

Fooks entered a conditional guilty plea to two counts of illegal possession of a firearm in connection with the stolen guns, reserving his right challenge the conviction on Second Amendment grounds.

In his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, Fooks argued that the seizure was “unconstitutional because his was not a violent or dangerous offense, he was not found by any court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others, he is not a violent or dangerous person, and the bar to his Second Amendment right is permanent.”

Failure to pay child support is a misdemeanor and constructive criminal contempt is a common law crime that is not a felony but also has no maximum penalty. It is often used in Maryland, court documents said, to enforce child support orders. Fooks was sentenced to four years for constructive criminal contempt.

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Fooks’ appeal also cited a string of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that strengthened gun rights, saying they put the burden squarely on the state to prove that its reasons for denying a gun to an individual outweighed the individual’s Second Amendment right to possess the gun.

But a divided Maryland Supreme Court ruled last summer that the state was justified in denying guns to Fooks, saying that even though he was not convicted of a felony, the length of his sentence put him in the category of “persons thought by a legislature to present a special danger of misuse” of a gun, and subject to restrictions. That is enough to make Maryland’s law constitutional under the latest U.S. Supreme Court rulings, said the opinion by Maryland Chief Judge Matthew Fader.

“Based on our conclusion that § 5-133(b)(2) [the challenged law] is the equivalent of a prohibition on the possession of firearms by felons, and the United States Supreme Court’s repeated references to such prohibitions as presumptively constitutional, we conclude that it satisfies Second Amendment scrutiny and is facially constitutional,” Fader wrote.

Among the offenses that would cost someone their right to own a gun under the Maryland law is conviction of “a violation classified as a common law crime and received a term of imprisonment of more than 2 years.”

In a lengthy dissent, Justice Jonathan Biran said that the U.S. Supreme Court rulings rely on historical context, and that the majority could not point to any previous law that “disarmed a citizen who violated a legal norm of society but was not viewed as a threat to public safety.”

“The logical conclusion of the Majority’s historical analysis is that the General Assembly may make infractions such as jaywalking or exceeding the posted speed limit the basis for permanent firearms disqualification by increasing the maximum penalty for those offenses to imprisonment for more than one year,” Biran wrote in a 65-page dissent, 22 pages of which were a history of British and U.S. gun laws.

But Fader said there was “not any magic afforded to the use of the word ‘felony'” in gun dispossession laws, “but a general intent to prohibit the possession of firearms by individuals who have committed offenses the respective legislative body has deemed serious enough to be eligible for a significant term of imprisonment.”

The Maryland Supreme Court ruling was almost immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which first considered Fooks’ petition i October. The state had initially declined to respond to Fooks’ petition, and the case was in limbo after the U.S. Supreme Court asked for a state response. That was filed in January.

In its response, the state said Fooks tried to “trivialize” his conviction as merely being for failure to pay child support. He glossed over the constructive criminal contempt charge, which the state said “is reserved for ‘the most extreme cases’ like this one.” The charge was “attributable to” a “willful” and “egregious refusal to comply with a court order concerning one of society’s most basic obligations, betraying a disrespect for the law and the legitimacy of the courts that enforce it,” the state said.

The state went on to say that Fooks’ case was a poor vehicle for a Second Amendment argument because the U.S. Supreme Court has always applied discussion of those rights to “law-abiding citizens.” But as Maryland Justice Shirley Watts noted in a concurring opinion, there was a strong likelihood that the guns Fooks possessed had been stolen from relatives, the basis for the initial police investigation, and whatever the scope of the Second Amendment may be, “possession of a stolen firearm was not among the rights intended to be protected.”

In his reply to the state, Fooks “steadfastly denied the theft allegation, maintaining that this was a family dispute over the removal and lawful disposition of the firearms from an elderly person for safety reasons, and that he had put himself ‘in a situation that is kind of a little awkward’ trying to protect someone” by pawning their guns.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case without comment.