Judge Arianna Freeman
Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
Arianna Julia Freeman was born in 1978 in Boston, Massachusetts. She earned an undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College and her Juris Doctor from Yale Law School. She clerked at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania before working in the Federal Community Defender Office.
Freeman served as an assistant federal public defender and then became the managing attorney for the Federal Community Defender Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
President Joe Biden nominated Freeman as a judge for the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in January 2022. After invoking cloture in September 2022, the Senate rejected her nomination. Two weeks later, under reconsideration, Freeman was narrowly confirmed. She received her commission in October 2022.
In the News…
The Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals determined that New Jersey’s ban of semi-automatic rifles and large capacity magazines violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. The state’s prominent assault weapons ban had been enacted in 1990.
Judge Arianna Freeman wrote the en banc decision, stating, “The text of the Second Amendment covers all magazines, not just magazines that New Jersey considers ‘standard capacity.’”
The circuit court found that the state failed to meet the Supreme Court precedent that modern firearm restrictions are consistent with historical U.S. gun regulations. Judge Freeman stated in the opinion, “When conducting the historical inquiry, we saw that the principles underpinning Founding-era firearm regulations pointed in one direction while the principles underpinning mid-to-late-nineteenth century laws pointed in the opposite direction.”
Judge Freeman continued, “Faced with an ‘irreconcilable conflict’ between the laws of those two timeframes, we concluded that we must look to Founding-era laws for analogies to modern-day regulations. We reached that conclusion based on the Supreme Court’s guidance that the Second Amendment’s ‘meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it.’”
The judge wrote, “Self-defense is one lawful purpose relevant to the common-use inquiry, but it is not the only one.”
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Judge Freeman today? You can let her know at:
The Honorable Arianna Freeman
Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals
James A. Byrne U.S. Courthouse
601 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
