  We report the creation and the study of the stability of a repulsive
quasi-homogeneous spin-$1/2$ Fermi gas with contact interactions. For the range
of scattering lengths $a$ explored, the dominant mechanism of decay is a
universal three-body recombination towards a Feshbach bound state. We observe
that the recombination coefficient $K_3\propto \epsilon_\text{kin} a^6$, where
the first factor, the average kinetic energy per particle
$\epsilon_\text{kin}$, arises from a three-body threshold law, and the second
one from the universality of recombination. Both scaling laws are consequences
of Pauli blocking effects in three-body collisions involving two identical
fermions. As a result of the interplay between Fermi statistics and the
momentum dependence of the recombination process, the system exhibits
non-trivial temperature dynamics during recombination, alternatively heating or
cooling depending on its initial quantum degeneracy. The measurement of $K_3$
provides an upper bound for the interaction strength achievable in equilibrium
for a uniform repulsive Fermi gas.
