The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the federal law barring gun possession by “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” cannot be applied to Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man who said he used marijuana about every other day. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion, saying the government’s attempt to use the law against Hemani’s regular marijuana use was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The court said the government had not shown that Hemani was dangerous and rejected the claim that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is automatically violent and dangerous.
Who Gets Targeted
The case centered on 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 after an FBI search of his family’s home turned up a Glock 9mm pistol and 60 grams of pot. The Justice Department accused Hemani of dealing drugs, using cocaine and sympathizing with Iran. Hemani was not charged with any other crimes or accused of using the weapon under the influence. His lawyer, Zachary Newland, said Hemani was thankful he “finally has closure.”
The ruling is a loss for President Donald Trump’s Republican administration, which defended the 1968 law. Gorsuch wrote that the administration’s core argument “fails under every measure.” The Trump administration had argued that guns and drugs are a dangerous combination. The Justice Department said about 300 people have been charged with violating the law annually, and a conviction can carry a 15-year prison sentence.
What the Law Was Built For
The law was enacted partly in response to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. It created classes of people the federal government could disarm, including those convicted of felonies or dishonorably discharged from the military. The drug provision covers people who are addicted to drugs and those who are an “unlawful user.” The opinion said the law was originally meant to keep guns away from dangerous people, but that the millions of people who now use marijuana cannot all be characterized that way. Gorsuch wrote, “Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them,” and added, “All of which leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.”
Gorsuch also wrote that the opinion narrowly limits the government’s power to take guns away from drug users who are not considered dangerous. He said, “We do not address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm.” Prosecutors could still charge a marijuana user if they had evidence the person was dangerous.
The Court’s Narrow Gatekeeping
The decision is the latest in a series of firearm cases to reach the Supreme Court since its landmark 2022 decision expanding gun rights. Since then, the court has upheld a law aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence and strict regulations on ghost gun kits, but has struck down a ban on bump stocks, an accessory that enables rapid fire. The justices are also considering a second firearm case this term over strict regulations on carrying guns in Hawaii.
The case drew unusual political alliances. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association supported Hemani’s case, as did cannabis legalization groups such as NORML. Gun safety groups including Everytown opposed the administration on Second Amendment issues. The ACLU said nearly half of Americans have reported using marijuana at some point in their lives. Cecillia Wang, legal director at the ACLU, said, “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.” NORML called the ruling a “vindication of personal freedom,” and the Second Amendment Foundation called it a “major victory for gun owners.” Smart Approaches to Marijuana condemned the decision. CEO Kevin Sabet said, “While the justices in this case appear to be most concerned with historical battles over Second Amendment rights, public health and safety are the collateral damage in this decision.” Everytown said the decision still recognizes that “drugs and guns can make for a dangerous mix.”
The opinion was described as 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 case reached the court amid shifting views on marijuana use, with roughly half of U.S. states allowing recreational use and an even higher share allowing medicinal use. The Trump administration reclassified medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug in April, but recreational use remains illegal under federal law.
The law was also used in a case against Hunter Biden, who was convicted in Wilmington, Delaware, of buying a gun while addicted to cocaine in 2018. He was later pardoned by his father, Democratic President Joe Biden. CNN said President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted in 2024 of the same law, though that involved his addiction to crack cocaine, and was later pardoned by President Biden.
During oral arguments in March, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump nominee, asked whether a person taking Ambien without a prescription would be covered under the law. A federal district court in Texas had dismissed the charge against Hemani, pointing to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Bruen. The conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, saying 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 Trump administration argued that colonial-era gun prohibitions dealing with public drunkenness showed governments historically could disarm people who were frequently inebriated. Lawyers for Hemani and a coalition of groups supporting access to marijuana said those historic laws were not analogous because they restricted firearms only for people who were actively intoxicated. 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 does not appear in the federal statute.
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.” He said, “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.” 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.”
Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said, “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,” and added, “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.”