Supreme Court limits power of federal government to disarm drug users
By John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court Thursday curbed the power of the federal government to disarm a frequent marijuana user, limiting the scope of a law enacted during the 1960s to keep weapons out of the hands of Americans who regularly use drugs.
In an unanimous opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court ruled that the government’s prosecution of a man who used pot was inconsistent with the Second Amendment.
The court settled the case in a way that was exceedingly limited, reserving broader questions about whether federal prosecutors could target people who are addicted to drugs or whose use of drugs makes them a danger to themselves or others. The slimness of the decision was underscored by the fact that all nine justices joined an opinion on an issue, the Second Amendment, that has usually divided them along ideological lines.
The case centered on Ali Danial Hemani, a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan, who was indicted in 2023 on a single count of violating the federal anti-guns-and-drugs law. Though the Justice Department accused Hemani of many things — dealing drugs, using cocaine and sympathizing with Iran — his indictment followed an FBI search of his family’s home that turned up a Glock 9mm pistol and 60 grams of pot.
“We do not question that sometimes an individual’s unlawful use of marijuana (or any other controlled substance) may render him a danger to others,” the court wrote. “But, again, the government disclaims the need to show anything like that in this case. Instead, it asks us to conclude that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous without any further showing.”
And that, Gorsuch said, was a bridge too far.
The appeal was wrapped up in forces far greater than Hemani’s own circumstances, including the conservative Supreme Court’s push in recent years to weigh gun laws with an eye toward history. And the case reached the high court at a time of broadly shifting views on marijuana use: roughly half of US states have legalized small amounts of marijuana for recreational use and an even higher share of states allow the drug to be used medicinally.
“The court seems to have gone out of its way to avoid deciding any bigger questions about whether it’s constitutional to criminalize gun possession by drug addicts; by individuals who are actually intoxicated; or in other circumstances in which the defendant is not obviously dangerous,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “But it’s only a matter of time before those questions will come back to the Court, in cases in which it will be harder for the justices to punt.”
The Trump administration, which has professed robust support for the Second Amendment, nevertheless defended the federal law in this case, arguing that guns and drugs are a dangerous combination. The Justice Department said about 300 people have been charged with violating the law annually. A conviction can carry a 15-year prison sentence.
John Commerford, executive director of the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, called the decision a “major victory for the Second Amendment and peaceable gun owners across America.”
“No one should be deprived of their God-given right to keep and bear arms for engaging in nonviolent conduct, and there is no historical justification for doing so,” he said.
Gun control groups were more muted in their response. Leigh Rome, senior litigation attorney with the Giffords Law Center, said the decision “continues to allow the government to enact and enforce reasonable categorical prohibitions on firearms ownership.”
During oral arguments in March, it was clear both conservative and liberal justices had reservations with the breadth of the prosecution. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump nominee, asked whether a person taking Ambien without a prescription would be covered under the law – a hypothetical that underscored the law’s scope.
Adding to the political sheen was the fact that President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted in 2024 of the same law, though that involved his addiction to crack cocaine. He was later pardoned by President Biden.
The case gave the Supreme Court another chance to revisit its landmark 2022 decision, NYSRPA v. Bruen, that made it easier for Americans to carry handguns in public and required gun prohibitions to have some connection to US founding-era laws to sustain a Second Amendment challenge. The court then clarified that historical test in a decision two years later, upholding a law that bars people who are the subject of domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns when they have been found to pose a credible safety threat.
So Hemani’s case raised a hazy debate about colonial-era gun prohibitions that dealt with public drunkenness. The Trump administration said those laws historically permitted governments to disarm people who were frequently inebriated. But lawyers for Hemani, and a coalition of groups supporting access to marijuana, said those historic laws weren’t analogous because they restricted firearms only for people who were actively intoxicated.
The Gun Control Act of 1968, enacted partly in response to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., created classes of people the federal government could disarm, including those convicted of felonies or dishonorably discharged from the military. The text of the drug provision includes both people who are addicted to drugs and those who are an “unlawful user.”
At least 43 states have similar laws restricting access to firearms for drug users. But opponents noted that most of those laws define the people who could be disarmed as “habitual” users – a word that doesn’t appear in the federal statute.
A federal district court in Texas dismissed the charge against Hemani, pointing to the 2022 decision in Bruen. The conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, holding in a brief decision that the historical record points only to laws that barred guns for Americans who are actively intoxicated or under the influence of drugs at the time of their arrest. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court last year.
“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,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, which was part of the team that represented Hemani.
“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,” she said.
CNN’s Devan Cole contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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