The Ohio Supreme Court has cleared a path for people with domestic violence convictions to ask for their gun rights back, even when those same convictions trigger a federal firearms ban. In a 6-1 ruling in State v. Heffley, the justices said state trial courts can hear petitions to restore firearm rights and decide, case by case, whether someone has earned that relief. The decision sends an Allen County case back to a local judge for a full hearing on the facts.
Writing for the majority in a slip opinion, Justice R. Patrick DeWine said trial courts have authority under Ohio Revised Code 2923.14 to lift a state firearms disability even when a related federal ban exists. The court held that an applicant is not “otherwise prohibited by law” under R.C. 2923.14(D)(3) when both the state and federal firearms prohibitions arise from the same conviction. The justices affirmed the Third District Court of Appeals and returned the matter to the trial court to weigh the statute's discretionary factors, as reflected in the judgment and remand order from the Supreme Court of Ohio.
The case centers on Patrick Heffley, who was convicted of fourth-degree felony domestic violence in 2006 and served roughly a year in prison, after earlier misdemeanor domestic violence convictions in 2000 and 2004. In 2023, after completing his sentence, he asked an Allen County court to lift his state firearms disability. The trial court refused, pointing to the federal ban that still applied. In 2024, the Third District Court of Appeals reversed that denial and ordered the lower court to reconsider his petition, as detailed in the Third District opinion.
At the heart of the dispute is how federal law treats a state conviction for gun purposes. Under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1), people convicted of crimes punishable by more than one year in prison are generally barred from possessing firearms. But 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(20) says a conviction does not count as a federal “conviction” for firearms purposes if a person's civil rights have been restored under state law. The majority leaned on that structure and on federal precedent to conclude that when a state court formally removes a firearms disability in a situation like Heffley's, the parallel federal ban would also fall away. The federal rule is summarized by the Legal Information Institute.
Dissent and public safety concerns
Justice Jennifer Brunner was having none of it. In a lone dissent, she warned that the majority's reading “creates a galling disparity” by potentially allowing some people with felony level domestic violence records to regain gun rights while individuals with certain misdemeanors cannot. In her view, the plain language of R.C. 2923.14 treats an existing federal prohibition as a barrier that must be resolved before a state court can act. Brunner said she would have upheld the trial court's denial of Heffley's petition. Her full dissent appears in the court's slip opinion from the Supreme Court of Ohio.
What happens next
The high court's ruling does not hand Heffley a firearm or even an automatic restoration of rights. Instead, it sends the case back to the Allen County Court of Common Pleas, where a judge must decide whether he meets the statutory criteria, including whether he has “led a law-abiding life” since his release, and whether relief is appropriate as a matter of discretion. Trial judges will now be on the front line of these restoration battles, as described by Court News Ohio.
Statewide context: guns and intimate partner deaths
The ruling lands in the middle of grim numbers on domestic violence in Ohio. An annual fatality report from the Ohio Domestic Violence Network tracked 157 domestic violence fatalities in the year ending June 30, 2025, and found that firearms were used in 84% of those deaths. Advocates and some prosecutors argue that those statistics are exactly why lawmakers and courts should go slow when it comes to restoring gun access for people with histories of intimate partner violence, according to the ODVN fatality report.
For now, the Ohio Supreme Court has untangled a legal interpretation problem but left the heavier policy choices to others. Lawmakers in Columbus could rewrite the statute if they want federal bans to be an automatic deal breaker for state restoration. Until then, Ohioans with qualifying convictions who want their gun rights back will have to make their case one at a time in front of a local judge.
