Supreme Court sides with marijuana user who was barred from owning guns : NPR
The U.S. Supreme Court
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The Supreme Court found Thursday that the government’s prosecution of a marijuana user for owning guns was inconsistent with the Second Amendment.
The decision was unanimous.
“The Court’s decision is narrow,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote. “It does not address efforts to ban addicts or those presently intoxicated from possessing a firearm; other prophylactic laws Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms … provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies; or whether the government could bring a prosecution … accompanied by individualized proof that the defendant’s drug use renders him a danger to himself or others, or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous.”
The case stems from the arrest of Ali Hemani. In 2022, federal agents found a pistol and 60 grams of marijuana in a search of Hemani’s home. When asked, Hemani told the agents that he uses marijuana “about every other day,” according to court filings. On the basis of his drug use and gun ownership, the government convicted Hemani of violating the law at issue in this case. This is the same law that was used to convict President Biden’s son Hunter in 2024.
Hemani challenged the law as unconstitutional, contending that it violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms and is unconstitutionally vague.
The law prevents “unlawful” drug users from owning guns, but as his lawyers pointed out in filings to the Supreme Court, “the statute does not define “unlawful user.”
“Is someone who uses a controlled substance once a year “an unlawful user”? What about someone who uses that substance every six months, or every two weeks?,” they argued. “Does it matter how much one consumes, or only how frequently one does so? The statute does not say.”
To enforce the law against Hemani, they argued in court filings, “would empower the government to deprive tens of millions of Americans who pose little if any risk of firearm misuse of a fundamental constitutional right.”
Adding to the issues in the case is that marijuana is to some degree legal in more than 40 states. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, more than 15 percent of Americans aged 12 or older used marijuana in 2024. Other surveys put number considerably higher.
Perhaps the widespread use of marijuana is why a diverse array of organizations from across the political spectrum supported Hemani’s cause. A rare combination of gun rights organizations and civil liberties advocates filed briefs urging the court to take Hemani’s side. At the same time, the Trump administration’s defense of the law was supported by California and some other liberal states, and Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control.
The government contended that the law was not vague, and that it only used the law against “habitual users” of illegal drugs. Further, the government said that laws like this one are similar to laws from the founding, when states restricted the gun rights of “habitual drunkards.” But Hemani’s lawyers responded that the phrase “habitual user” is no less vague than “unlawful user.”
The Supreme Court agreed with Hemani’s concerns.
But the court did not disregard concerns about drug users possessing guns, as Gorsuch wrote.
This decision is the latest in a series of cases stemming from the court’s 2022 landmark ruling that created a new test to determine if a gun regulation is constitutional. In that year, the court decided that in order for a gun regulation to be valid, the government must show that there existed “relevantly similar” regulations at the time of the founding.
That led to hundreds of challenges against gun regulations across the United States.
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