Supreme Court loosens law barring marijuana users from owning guns

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said on June 18 that a Texas man’s regular use of marijuana is not a good enough reason to criminally charge him for owning a gun – a decision that weakens a federal law aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people while strengthening gun owners’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.

It’s a felony under the Gun Control Act of 1968 for anyone who is "an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" to have a gun.

The Department of Justice defended that restriction, even as the Trump administration is moving to expand gun rights and to reclassify marijuana to a less dangerous category of drugs. Cannabis is legal in some form in the majority of states.

But the government argued that barring a regular pot smoker from having a gun is permissible under the Constitution because the restriction lifts as soon as someone stops using drugs.

Justice Neil Gorsuch described the court's unanimous decision as a narrow one. He said it does not address efforts to bar addicts from having a gun, to keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons, or deal with whether the government can show that a particular person's use of marijuana makes him too dangerous to be armed.

But the government cannot imprison someone or disarm them for life simply for using marijuana a few times a week, he wrote.

"In saying this much, 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," Gorsuch wrote. "But, again, the government disclaims the need to show anything like that in this case."

Gun owner used pot 'about every other day'

At the time of his arrest, Ali Hemani, a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan, was being monitored by the FBI because of his alleged connection to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard. The government has designated the guard as a global terrorist group.

During a 2022 search of his Texas home, Hemani told the agents he had a Glock 9mm pistol and also said he used marijuana "about every other day."

Although the government tried to detain Hemani on more serious allegations of criminal activity, he was charged only with having a gun while being an unlawful user of marijuana. Violating that law is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Lower court sided with gun owner

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the gun ban can’t be applied to Hemani because of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that gun laws must be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

While history and tradition support "some limits on a presently intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon," the appeals court said, "they do not support disarming a sober person based solely on past substance usage."

Asking the Supreme Court to overturn that decision, the DOJ argued that laws existing at the time the country was founded restricted the rights of habitual drinkers, even when they were sober.

Erin Murphy, the attorney representing Hemani, countered that the whole point of the historical laws was to distinguish between drinkers and drunkards.

The modern law, she said, can’t sweep so broadly "to capture something that is the type of thing that people regularly, all throughout the country, lawfully use a few days a week," she said during the March oral arguments.

"And most states and the president have made the judgment that this is not so categorically addictive or dangerous that no one can use it safely," Murphy said about marijuana.

Gorsuch cites founding fathers' drinking habits

Gorsuch wrote that the historical laws the government cited “targeted different kinds of people, did so for different purposes, and operated in different ways.”

“Had habitual drunkard laws applied to those who simply drank regularly," he said, "many notable early Americans could have faced trouble."

John Adams, Gorsuch noted, drank a tankard of hard cider for breakfast. Thomas Jefferson enjoyed three or four glasses of wine at dinner.

And the fact that the federal government has contributed to the decriminalization of marijuana, he said, “leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.”

Mixed reactions from advocacy groups

Gun rights groups and cannabis legalization groups supported Hemani, as did the American Civil Liberties Union.

"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," Cecillia Wang, legal director at the ACLU, said in a statement.

Gun safety groups, which have opposed the Trump administration in other Second Amendment cases, had backed the Justice Department.

While disagreeing with the decision, the groups applauded its narrowness.

Janet Carter, an attorney with Everytown Law, said the court rightly recognized that drugs and guns can be a dangerous mix, leaving open the possibility of prosecuting someone if there’s evidence of that danger.

Hundreds of drug users charged each year for having a gun

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers says the provision of the act at issue is being used less for public safety reasons than as a tool for selective prosecutions, leverage in plea bargains, or "as a means of incarcerating otherwise law-abiding citizens when the government’s primary theory falls short."

Hemani’s case, the association said in a filing, makes their point. The government couldn’t make its preferred charges stick, so the law at issue provided an easy fallback "because both drug use and firearm ownership are ubiquitous features of American life."

The government says it charges more than 300 people each year with having a gun while being either an unlawful user of a controlled substance or a drug addict. The DOJ said that provision "plays an integral role" in a set of rules designed to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous or irresponsible people. The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed in response to the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Hunter Biden, who was later pardoned by his father, President Joe Biden, during his final weeks in office, was convicted in 2024 of violating the law by purchasing a gun despite having a known drug addiction.