Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a Texas man who challenged a federal law prohibiting certain drug users from possessing firearms.
In a unanimous ruling in U.S. v. Hemani, the justices said the government violated the Second Amendment by prosecuting Ali Hemani for possessing a gun while he was an unlawful drug user. According to the case, Hemani was an occasional marijuana user when the FBI found a handgun at his Texas home in 2022.
The decision was limited in scope. The court did not strike down the federal statute altogether. Instead, the justices concluded that the government cannot automatically strip gun rights from someone based solely on marijuana use a few times a week. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for the court.
Gorsuch wrote that the government had asked the court to treat anyone who regularly uses marijuana as inherently violent and dangerous “without any further showing.” He said that argument relied largely on the government’s own assertion, which he noted conflicts with some of its regulatory actions. Granting that kind of sweeping authority, he wrote, would risk giving the government broad power to label groups as dangerous and bar them from gun ownership, potentially undermining the Second Amendment.
The ruling does not address separate efforts to prohibit firearm possession by people who are addicted to drugs or who are currently intoxicated, Gorsuch said. He also emphasized that the decision does not affect other federal gun restrictions, including laws barring convicted felons from possessing firearms, or cases in which prosecutors can show that a defendant’s drug use makes that person dangerous.
The law at the center of the case makes it a crime for an unlawful drug user to possess a firearm, with penalties of up to 15 years in prison. The Justice Department has said about 300 people are charged under the statute each year.
Perhaps the most high-profile person convicted under the law was Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son, though he was pardoned by his father in December 2024.
The law at the center of the case was the latest to face Supreme Court scrutiny in the wake of its landmark 2022 decision that recognized the right to carry a firearm outside the home. In that decision, the high court laid out a new test for courts to apply when considering the constitution of a gun law. The framework requires the government to show that a restriction is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.
In the wake of that ruling, the Supreme Court upheld in 2024 a federal law barring people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from having guns. The justices are also considering a challenge to a Hawaii law that prohibits people with concealed carry permits from bringing their guns onto private property open to the public without permission.
The government’s case against Hemani focused solely on his marijuana use, which his lawyers said did not make him dangerous. Forty states have legalized marijuana use to some degree in recent years, adding a wrinkle to the legal battle. While cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, President Trump signed an executive order in December to reschedule marijuana to a lower drug classification. The Justice Department in April reclassified certain marijuana products as less-dangerous drugs.
Gorsuch, in the majority opinion, and Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Elena Kagan, both noted the shifts in marijuana policy at the federal and state levels, as well as the rise in marijuana consumption, and said those trends worked against the Justice Department in the case.
“Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them,” Gorsuch wrote. “All of which leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous. “
While the president has taken steps to bolster Second Amendment rights, the Trump administration also defended the ban on possession by drug users before the Supreme Court and urged it to uphold the restriction.
In filings with the high court, the Justice Department said the Second Amendment allows Congress to restrict gun possession by habitual drug users. Backing the Trump administration were gun violence prevention groups like the Brady Center for Prevent Gun Violence and Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
“Since our nation’s founding, commonsense restrictions for owning firearms have been a part of our laws. Today’s opinion continues to allow the government to enact and enforce reasonable categorical prohibitions on firearms ownership,” Leigh Rome, senior litigation attorney at Giffords Law Center, said in a statement.
But on the other side, the American Civil Liberties Union signed on as co-counsel to represent Hemani. Also backing him were gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association.
The ACLU cheered the Supreme Court’s decision rejecting Hemani’s prosecution, saying it makes it clear that the government cannot make it a crime for people who use marijuana to own a gun.
“With nearly half of Americans reporting marijuana use at some point in their lives, this ruling protects the rights of millions and curbs the government’s ability to impose arbitrary and discriminatory penalties,” Cecillia Wang, the ACLU’s legal director, said in a statement. “The court has sent a strong message that the government cannot criminalize the conduct of large numbers of people by making categorical and unfounded assumptions about whether they are dangerous.”
