In June 2018, plaintiff Luis Orlando Pérez-Greaux had his Arecibo, Puerto Rico home raided by the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) after a period of surveillance. Pérez-Greaux was cooperative throughout the search, during which the PRPD found three kilograms (roughly 6.5 pounds) of cocaine, a digital scale, firearm periodicals, a gun holster, firearm magazines, separately packed bullets, and a .9mm Glock pistol that had been modified to function as a fully automatic machinegun. When questioned, Pérez-Greaux claimed that he had started drug trafficking earlier that year by packing cocaine with toys or various miscellaneous items and shipping it to the continental United States via the United States Postal Service. Although he provided two different accounts as to who gave him the firearm and how, in both he obtained the firearm from another individual who did not inform him that the firearm operated as a machinegun.

After serving a state sentence for illegal use of a firearm, John Wayne Morgan Jr. was stopped by police in Louisiana in 2023 while riding in a vehicle containing four loaded guns, one of which was stolen. He was indicted on two federal charges: (1) being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and (2) possessing unregistered firearms, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d).

Morgan moved to dismiss both counts, arguing that the statutes violated the Second Amendment under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). In this case, the Supreme Court established a two-step framework for Second Amendment issues. First, courts ask whether the Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct at issue. If it does, the burden shifts to the government, and they must then demonstrate the existence of longstanding historical tradition of disarming those with criminal histories such as Morgan. Morgan contended that, under this test, the government could not justify § 922(g)(1) as applied to him because there was no founding-era tradition of disarming individuals based solely on a felony conviction rather than on demonstrated dangerousness.