Zoie H. v. Nebraska

In 2018, Nebraska amended its criminal law to disenfranchise anyone adjudicated by a juvenile court to have committed certain acts from exercising their constitutional right to possess a firearm until age 25. See Neb. Rev. Stat. §28-1204.05(1). While the legislature accompanied that new criminal prohibition with a requirement that the juvenile court inform a juvenile of the Second Amendment consequences of an adverse adjudication, it did not amend its laws to require a right to trial by jury for offenses that can result in a loss of Second Amendment rights well past the age of majority. The net result is that Nebraska deprives individuals of their Second Amendment rights as a collateral consequence of an adjudication in which it deprives the accused of a right to a jury trial. In the decision below, the Supreme Court of Nebraska held that neither the Second nor Sixth Amendment precludes that result, reasoning that because the automatic loss of Second Amendment rights is imposed as a collateral consequence of the adjudication, and not as a direct criminal punishment, it does not implicate the Sixth Amendment at all. In so holding, the court undermined both constitutional rights and broke sharply with decisions from this Court and others. The question presented is: Whether the Second and Sixth Amendments permit a state to deprive an individual of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms based on the commission of an offense while denying the accused a right to a jury trial for that offense.