Connecticut Supreme Court dismisses challenge to protective orders banning guns. What prompted the ruling

Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant on Dec 31, 2025

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The state Supreme Court has turned back a weapons possession challenge when it ruled that courts can issue protective orders barring gun ownership in cases where subjects of the orders are not explicitly accused of crimes involving violence or threats of violence.

The decision rejects arguments by an anonymous defendant who claimed that he was wrongly subjected to and later convicted of violating a protective order against gun possession because the underlying offense on which the order was issued involved improper sexual contact rather than violence.

The appeal turned specifically on a state law that criminalizes violation of a protective order prohibiting weapons possession when the order is issued in “a case involving” the use, attempted use or threatened use of physical force.

The defendant bringing the appeal, referred to as Enrrique H. to conceal the identity of the minor relative he is accused of abusing, claimed that since the fourth-degree sexual assault charges against him did not explicit involve violence he was wrongly convicted of violating an order prohibiting gun possession.

The court said, in a decision written by Justice Andrew J. McDonald, that the defendant wrongly construed the phrase “a case involving” violence too narrowly. In the broader context of a crime involving a sexual offense against a minor, the court said other factors such as superior physical strength can constitute threatened force.

As used in state law, the court said the phrase “is broadly inclusive of an entire proceeding, action, suit, or controversy, and does not, contrary to the defendant’s contention, require that the protective order be issued in a case in which the actual, attempted,or threatened use of physical force is an essential element of a charged offense, or of a claim or defense.”

The court said the law is satisfied when “the defendant knows that he is subject to a protective order that was issued in a prior sex offense prosecution in which the actual, attempted, or threatened use of actual physical force or violence or superior physical strength against the victim was present within any aspect of the prosecution.”

The appeal arose from a series of sexual crimes by Enrrique H. involving multiple arrests for fourth-degree sexual assault, which involves nonconsensual sexual contact. The crime can be charged as a misdemeanor or felony depending on aggravating factors such as the victim’s age and the relationship of the accused to the victim.

He was first charged in Oct. 2019 with four counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and four counts of risk or injury to a child in connection with allegations that he assaulted a minor family member. He was ordered in court to surrender all firearms and ammunition.

About a year later, based on similar allegations, he was charged again with multiple counts of fourth-degree sexual assault and risk of injury. Another protective order on weapon possession was issued.

In 2022 he was arrested a third time and charged with and later convicted of violating the protective orders. The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and dismissed on procedural grounds a secondary argument that the conviction violated his U.S. Constitutional right to bear arms.

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