A US appeals court upheld a federal law that bars migrants who are in the United States illegally from possessing guns, rejecting arguments by a Mexican man convicted of unlawfully having a handgun that the ban was unconstitutional.
A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said on Tuesday that the ban was still valid even after recent US Supreme Court rulings that have expanded gun rights by requiring firearms restrictions to be in keeping with the nation's history and tradition.
The panel said those Supreme Court rulings did not unequivocally undermine an earlier decision by the 5th Circuit holding that the plain text of the US Constitution's Second Amendment does not encompass immigrants in the county illegally.
"We should not extend rights to illegal aliens any further than what the law requires," US Circuit Judge James Ho, a conservative appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, wrote in a concurring opinion.