Supreme Court Strikes Down Gun Ban for Marijuana Users in Unanimous Ruling

A unanimous narrowing of a half-century-old gun law

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled 9-0 that the federal government cannot automatically strip gun rights from people who casually use marijuana, siding with Ali Hemani, a Texas man charged after FBI agents found a Glock pistol, marijuana and cocaine in his home in 2022.reuters +1 The justices upheld a lower court's dismissal of Hemani's indictment, finding that his prosecution under a 1968 provision of the Gun Control Act intruded on the Second Amendment's right to "keep and bear arms."reuters Hemani, a dual U.S.-Pakistani citizen, had told authorities he used marijuana about every other day.reuters

Gorsuch frames the decision as deliberately narrow

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored the majority opinion, stressed that the ruling "is a narrow one" and does not address banning addicts or intoxicated people from possessing firearms, nor laws disarming convicted felons.nbcnews +1 The court rejected the government's claim that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is "categorically violent and dangerous" without further proof.nbcnews Affording the government that power, Gorsuch wrote, would risk allowing it to "quickly swallow" the Second Amendment.cbsnews The law makes possession a crime for anyone who "is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" — the same statute used to convict Hunter Biden in 2024 before his father pardoned him.reuters +1

A case that scrambled the usual political alliances

The dispute produced unusual coalitions. The American Civil Liberties Union served as co-counsel for Hemani alongside gun-rights groups including the National Rifle Association, while the Trump administration defended the law with backing from gun-violence-prevention groups such as the Giffords Law Center.cbsnews The Justice Department estimates roughly 300 people are charged under the provision each year, with violators facing up to 15 years in prison.cbsnews More than 15 percent of Americans aged 12 or older used marijuana in 2024, and 40 states have legalized it to some degree.npr +1

Another link in the chain from the 2022 Bruen test

The decision is the latest fallout from the court's landmark 2022 ruling, which required gun regulations to be "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."reuters The government had argued the drug-user ban echoed founding-era laws disarming "habitual drunkards," but Gorsuch rejected the analogy, noting "many drugs well known today were unknown in early America."reuters Gorsuch also observed that federal and state policy shifts toward marijuana left the government "awkwardly positioned" to call regular users uniquely dangerous, since "it helped fuel them."cbsnews