Supreme Court backs a marijuana user’s challenge to a restriction on gun ownership
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday endorsed a marijuana user’s challenge to a law that bars people who consume illegal drugs from having firearms, saying his constitutional right to bear arms was infringed upon.
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On a 9-0 vote, the court concluded that the government’s invocation of the law fell afoul of the Constitution’s Second Amendment when it was used against Ali Danial Hemani of Texas.
Federal prosecutors brought the charges after the FBI found a handgun during a search of Hemani’s home in 2022. The ruling authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch does not invalidate the law across the board, but it makes it harder for prosecutors to invoke it, especially as it relates to casual drug users.
The law makes it a crime for any person who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” to possess a firearm. It is the same statute that Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, was convicted under in June 2024 before his father pardoned him.
An added wrinkle in the case is that millions of Americans regularly use marijuana, which is legally available in many states even as it remains criminalized under federal law.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority often backs gun rights. In a major 2022 case that expanded the right to bear arms outside the home, the court set a new test for analyzing long-standing gun restrictions, setting off a wave of new litigation in lower courts.
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In Hermani’s case, he successfully challenged his indictment in both a Texas-based district court and in the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Prosecutors had suggested that Hemani, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Pakistan, had ties with Iranian groups hostile to the U.S., but he has faced no specific charges on that front.
FBI agents found a handgun, marijuana and cocaine when they searched his home.
The Trump administration defended the law in court, to the annoyance of gun rights advocates. Some are frustrated that the administration, which touts its support for the Second Amendment, has not always backed up that rhetoric in court.
In another gun case before the court, the justices are considering the lawfulness of a Hawaii law that prevents people from carrying firearms onto certain private properties without permission.
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