Kenneth Karwacki v. Josh Kaul

── Kenneth Karwacki v. Josh Kaul ── Case No.: 25-2361 Court: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Date: April 02, 2026 Category: General In the United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 25-2361 KENNETH KARWACKI, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JOSH KAUL, Attorney General of Wisconsin, Defendant-Appellee. ____________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. No. 24-cv-1639-bhl — Brett H. Ludwig, Judge. ____________________ ARGUED FEBRUARY 26, 2026 — DECIDED APRIL 2, 2026 ____________________ Before EASTERBROOK, SCUDDER, and ST. EVE, Circuit Judges. EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge. A special court martial con- victed Kenneth Karwacki of delivering peyote to fellow sol- diers. He received a bad-conduct discharge. Later he applied for a permit to carry a concealed firearm in Wisconsin. The state denied his application, relying on Wis. Stat. §941.29(1m)(b), which prohibits possession of firearms by a person who “has been convicted of a crime elsewhere that would be a felony if committed in this state.” Delivering pe- 2 No. 25-2361 yote is a Class E felony in Wisconsin. Wis. Stat. §§ 939.50(3)(e), 961.14(4)(m), 961.41(1)(a). Relying on the fact that the court martial called his offense a misdemeanor, Karwacki contends in this federal suit that the Constitution entitles him to a con- cealed-carry permit. The district court, however, entered judgment in the state’s favor. 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 130081 (E.D. Wis. July 9, 2025). Karwacki maintains that the state’s treatment of his mili- tary misdemeanor conviction as equivalent to a state-law fel- ony conviction violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Art. IV §1. This clause reads: Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Ef- fect thereof. The constitutional language reveals one problem with Karwacki’s position: a federal court martial is not a “judicial Proceeding[ in any] other State”. See Derrickson v. Danville, 845 F.2d 715, 720 (7th Cir. 1988), which concludes that the Clause does not apply to federal judgments. Nor has Con- gress enacted a statute, parallel to 28 U.S.C. §1738, specifying what consequences a court martial’s decision must or may have in the states. What is more, we do not see how Wisconsin has deprived the court martial’s decision of “Full Faith and Credit” in any sense. The tribunal sentenced Karwacki to a bad-conduct dis- charge; Wisconsin has not tried to deprive that ruling of its effect. The main function of this Clause is to ensure that judg- ments retain their primary effects, often via rules of issue or No. 25-2361 3 claim preclusion. See Baker v. General Motors Corp., 522 U.S. 222, 233 (1998). Implementation of the military conviction is not at stake here. Instead the question is what collateral consequences it carries under state law. Every state must answer questions for all convictions—federal civilian, federal military, those of other states, those of other nations—such as whether a person with a given conviction can vote, hold public office, practice law, or carry firearms. No one would say (well, no one should say) that Wisconsin must grant, to a person convicted in New York of fraud, a right to serve as Comptroller of Milwaukee, on the theory that any domestic consequence of an out-of- state conviction violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause. The Clause does not prevent states from specifying domestic civil consequences of foreign judgments, which is why we held in Rosin v. Monken, 599 F.3d 574 (7th