SCOTUS News: Justices uphold gun rights of marijuana users

The government violated the Second Amendment rights of a man who regularly used marijuana by prosecuting him under a federal law prohibiting the possession of a gun in the home while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court has ruled.

The defendant in the case, Ali Hemani, is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Pakistan. Born in Texas, Hemani has lived most of his life in the Dallas area with his parents.

In 2022, the federal agents conducted a search of the family home as part of an investigation into whether Hemani and other members of his family were engaged in terrorism-related activities.

During the search, Hemani cooperated with federal agents, surrendering a gun he kept in the house and pointing out marijuana on the property. During the course of a voluntary interview, the defendant told law enforcement that he used marijuana about every other day.

More than six months later, the government prosecuted the defendant under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3), which prohibits knowingly possessing a gun in the home while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance.

Hemani moved to dismiss the indictment, contending the government’s effort to enforce §922(g)(3) against him violated his Second Amendment rights. A federal judge granted the motion. The government filed a petition for certiorari after losing an appeal before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court held that the government’s prosecution of Hemani under §922(g)(3)’s unlawful user provision is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, author of the opinion of the court, went out of his way to explain that the court’s decision was a narrow one which did not address: (1) government efforts to ban addicts or intoxicated individuals from possessing firearms; (2) laws Congress might pass upon determining that users of particular drugs pose a special risk of misusing firearms; (3) §922(g)(1)’s provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies; or (4) whether the government could prosecute under §922(g)(3) based on individualized proof that the defendant’s drug use rendered him a danger to himself or others, or proof that certain drugs always render users dangerous.

Click here to read the full text of the Supreme Court’s June 18 decision in United States v. Hemani.

To the point

“The government maintains that it may automatically strip Mr. Hemani of his Second Amendment right to possess a firearm because he uses marijuana a few times a week. More than that, because he possessed a gun despite this prohibition, the government insists it may imprison him for up to 15 years and disarm him for life. According to the government, none of this turns on how much marijuana Mr. Hemani uses or what effect it has on him. It makes no difference either if he keeps a firearm only in his home for self-defense, never misuses a gun while intoxicated, and never poses a danger to himself or others as a result of his marijuana use. The only thing the government must show, it says, is that an individual like Mr. Hemani regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance.

“To square that expansive theory with the Second Amendment, the government invites us to draw an analogy between its present regulation and historical laws addressing habitual drunkards. Those laws, the government contends, demonstrate a tradition of firearm regulation consistent with its effort to disarm any regular user of any controlled substance without any further showing. But the government’s analogy fails under every measure it asks us to consider: The historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways. And faced with all these shortcomings in the government’s submission, we cannot say it has carried its conceded burden of showing its prosecution of Mr. Hemani complies with the Second Amendment.”

— Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amey Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, opinion of the court

“I agree with the Court that §922(g)(3) violates the Second Amendment as applied to respondent Ali Hemani, and I join its opinion in full. I write separately to call attention to another issue: As a matter of both original meaning and this Court’s precedents, §922(g)(3) appears to exceed Congress’s enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce. The statute makes it a federal crime for unlawful drug users to possess any firearm or ammunition ‘in or affecting commerce.’ Under the prevailing interpretation of §922(g)(3), the Government can secure a conviction for unlawful firearm possession ‘if the firearm possessed’ by the drug user ‘had previously traveled in interstate commerce.’ The Commerce Clause does not authorize Congress to ‘regulate or ban possession of any item that has ever been offered for sale or crossed state lines.’ Such an understanding would ‘convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States.’ So, while the issue was not presented in this case, the Court, and lower courts, should revisit the constitutionality of §922(g).”

— Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring

“I join the Court’s opinion in full because it correctly applies our decisions in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U. S. 1 (2022), and United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. 680 (2024). But I continue to believe that we veered off course in Bruen. I write separately to emphasize that means-end scrutiny — the approach courts applied before we adopted Bruen’s ‘history and tradition’ metric — offers a more rational way of assessing the constitutionality of firearm regulations.

“As I and others have elsewhere explained, Bruen is unworkable. It imposes on judges the unfamiliar and difficult tasks of sifting through centuries-old evidence in order to answer ‘contested historical questions,’ and ‘applying those answers to resolve contemporary problems.’ Given those challenges, it is unsurprising that Bruen’s test is vulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application, as judges draw different conclusions from the same historical evidence and reach divergent assessments of the same laws.

“Perhaps worst of all, Bruen leaves no room to consider ‘the real and present stakes of the problems facing our society today.’ Instead, to pass a new firearm regulation, legislatures and their lawyers are, as a practical matter, forced to trawl through inconclusive and incomplete historical records in search of evidence they can only hope will satisfy this Court.”

— Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, concurring

“In attempting to rebuff a Second Amendment challenge, the Government need not identify a historical twin or precise precursor. Still, the Government must cite analogues that are ‘relevantly similar’ and that therefore furnish a basis for inferring that a challenged law is consistent with the historical understanding of the right that the Second Amendment codified. Here, the Government’s analogues are too far afield to justify the application of §922(g) to a marijuana user like respondent.

“We need not say more to decide this case, and I would for that reason say no more. I accordingly would affirm on this ground alone.”

— Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Elena Kagan, concurring in judgment