The U.S. Supreme Court on March 2 declined to take up a Utah woman’s request to review the legality of a federal law that prevents people with serious criminal convictions from owning firearms.

The justices denied the petition in Vincent v. Bondi in an unsigned order. The court did not explain its decision. No justices dissented.

The ban on felons having guns is part of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968.

The new ruling came after the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen.

In that case, the court found New York’s restrictive handgun licensing law violated the Second Amendment. The ruling affirmed the right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, and created a legal test requiring that gun laws be consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation” to survive constitutional scrutiny.

That ruling set off a wave of challenges to gun laws and led to a split among federal courts of appeals on the issue of whether the Second Amendment permits the government to permanently disarm a U.S. citizen who was convicted of a nonviolent felony.

The petitioner, Melynda Vincent, a single mother in Utah, was prevented from owning a gun after a felony bank fraud conviction for cashing a fraudulent check.

Vincent was convicted in 2008 and given a sentence of probation for presenting a bad check for $498.12 at a grocery store, a crime that did not involve violence or illegal drugs, according to Vincent’s petition.

The petition said after the Bruen ruling, she sued in 2020 to vindicate her Second Amendment rights by filing an as-applied challenge of the federal law known as Section 922(g)(1) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime for a felon to possess a firearm.

In an as-applied challenge like Vincent’s, the litigant argues a law is unconstitutional as it has been applied to her specifically. In a facial challenge, a litigant argues a law is always unconstitutional and is therefore void on its face.

The single mother said in the petition that she wanted to be able to keep a firearm for protection and because she wanted to be able to enjoy shooting activities such as hunting with her family.

After her conviction, Vincent became a licensed clinical social worker, owner of a business, mother, and public-health activist, the petition said.

“She has no history of violent behavior or other conduct that suggests she could not responsibly possess a firearm for self-defense. And for more than seventeen years, she has been a law-abiding citizen,” the petition said.

A federal district court dismissed her lawsuit based on current precedents of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit that upheld Section 922(g)(1). Vincent appealed to the 10th Circuit but that court was unmoved, finding that the government could permanently deprive her of firearms ownership because of the conviction for attempting to pass a bad check.

The Third Circuit ruled in a separate case in 2023 that Section 922(g)(1) was unconstitutionally applied to a plaintiff who was convicted of making a false statement to procure food stamps, the petition said.

In another ruling, the Eighth Circuit agreed with the 10th Circuit, finding there was “no need for felony-by-felony litigation regarding the constitutionality” of the legal provision, the petition said.

The Supreme Court gave Vincent another chance to make her case after it upheld a federal gun control law that bars people under domestic violence-related restraining orders from possessing firearms.

In United States v. Rahimi (2024) the high court found that the Second Amendment isn’t violated when an individual is disarmed after a court has found him to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another.

After that, the Supreme Court directed the 10th Circuit to reconsider Vincent’s case in wake of the Rahimi ruling.

The circuit court then found that “Rahimi doesn’t undermine [its] earlier reasoning or result,” and that the court was still bound by pre-Rahimi, pre-Bruen circuit precedent upholding Section 922(g)(i) “without drawing constitutional distinctions based on the type of felony involved.”

The 10th Circuit said its precedent “applies to nonviolent as well as to violent offenders,” the petition said.

The U.S. Department of Justice had urged the Supreme Court to decline Vincent’s appeal.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said Vincent cannot claim that as a nonviolent felon she has been subjected to a “permanent” ban on firearms ownership.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently reinstituted an administrative process under Section 925(c) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code that allows convicted felons to regain the ability to possess firearms, Sauer said in a brief.

“Although there is some disagreement in the courts of appeals about how to evaluate as-applied challenges to Section 922(g)(1), that disagreement does not warrant this Court’s review at this time,” Sauer said.

The disagreement itself is “shallow” and may disappear “in light of the Department’s re-establishment of the Section 925(c) process,” he added.

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the new ruling.

Vincent’s attorney, Jeffrey T. Green of Green Lauerman in Washington, said he was disappointed the petition was denied, especially after the Supreme Court considered the petition multiple times and sent the case back to the 10th Circuit for reconsideration.

“I am confident that at some point the Court will take up the question,” he told The Epoch Times.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared March 2, 2026 in The Epoch Times.