Can marijuana smokers legally own guns? Supreme Court rules
Lower courts have ruled that past drug use does not violate the Second Amendment unless the gun owner is currently a high-level gun owner. The Department of Justice disagrees.
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration, which has been an ardent supporter of gun rights, is still trying to convince the Supreme Court on March 2 that people who frequently smoke marijuana can be jailed for gun possession.
The Justice Department will make such an argument even though the administration is trying to reclassify marijuana into a less dangerous drug category and even though it is legal in some form in the majority of states.
This is just one notable aspect of the case, another involving the constitutional right to bear arms, which the justices decided this year.
Their decisions could shed light on the legal test the courts have enacted in recent years, leading to a surge in gun control challenges. It has also caused significant confusion in lower courts attempting to apply the test.
But judges could sidestep aspects of the Second Amendment and find that federal laws prohibiting “illegal users” of controlled substances from possessing firearms are problematic for other reasons. This could limit the scope of the ban to those who are “addicted” to marijuana and other drugs deemed dangerous enough for the government to regulate, rather than targeting the estimated tens of millions of Americans who use marijuana and other drugs recreationally.
Here’s what you need to know:
What exactly does that mean?
The government is defending the prosecution of Ali Danial Hemani, a dual U.S.-Pakistani citizen who was being monitored by the FBI for suspected ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards paramilitary group. The government has designated the security forces as a global terrorist group.
During a 2022 raid of his Texas home, Hemani told investigators he had a Glock 9mm handgun and said he used marijuana “almost every other day.”
The government tried to detain Hemani on more serious criminal charges, but he was charged only with being an illegal user of marijuana and possessing a firearm. This is a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
What did the lower court rule?
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the gun ban could not apply to Hemani, based on the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 ruling that bans must be historically based “consistent with the tradition of gun control.”
This is supported by history and tradition, but there are certain limitations. the current The appeals court said that “the right of an inebriated person to bear arms cannot be recognized” and that it “does not support disarming a sober person solely on the basis of past drug use.”
Why is the Trump administration defending the law?
In another gun rights case the Supreme Court is considering this session, the Justice Department is challenging Hawaii’s restrictive regulations on guns in public places.
“As I stated shortly after taking office, the Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote about X after filing a Supreme Court brief challenging the Hawaii law. “My Department of Justice will continue to be the most pro-Second Amendment Department in history.”
But the government argues that Mr. Hemani’s case “presents a narrow situation” in which the government can meet the “draconian burden” it imposes when restricting gun rights.
“As soon as a person ceases habitual drug use, he or she regains the ability to possess a weapon,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in the filing.
Brady Gun Control Advocates took the opposite side in the Hawaii case, but supports the Justice Department’s defense of the federal ban on gun possession by drug users.
“We have significant disagreements with the Trump administration on gun violence prevention,” said Douglas Letter, the group’s chief legal officer. “That doesn’t mean they’re always wrong.”
Is President Trump trying to declassify marijuana?
President Donald Trump has directed the Justice Department to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous substance.
“U.S. policy appears to be that marijuana is both useful medicine for some patriotic Americans and a spark that twists ordinary people into lunatics ready to attack police,” the liberal groups Cato Institute and Lasson Foundation wrote in a filing supporting Hemani.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that the purpose of the reclassification was to “facilitate research into medical cannabis and CBD” while continuing to restrict the sale of products that pose serious health risks.
Still, Heather Torella of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a public policy think tank, said the pending rescheduling “could weaken the federal government’s case about the inherent dangers of cannabis use.”
Torella said in a preview of oral arguments that the justices could ask whether there is a difference in gun ownership prohibitions for people who smoke marijuana recreationally and those who use marijuana medically if the controlled substance has a medical use.
How often are laws used?
The government says it regularly prosecutes more than 300 people each year for possessing a gun while illegally using a controlled substance or being addicted to drugs. The Justice Department said the provision “plays an important role” in a series of rules designed to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous or irresponsible individuals. The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed in response to the assassinations of President Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
But the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers says the law’s provisions in question are used primarily as a selective prosecution tool, the use of plea bargaining, or “a means to imprison law-abiding citizens when the government’s underlying theory is inadequate,” rather than for public safety reasons.
The association said in its AA filing that Mr Hemani’s lawsuit vindicates their claims. Because the government was unable to establish the desired charges, the law in question offered an easy alternative “because both drug use and firearm ownership are ubiquitous features of American life.”
What impact could this incident have on gun control in general?
In a landmark 2022 decision that struck down a New York state law that required residents to have a valid reason to obtain a handgun license, the Supreme Court created a new “historical tradition” test for firearms regulations.
Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said this has forced a re-evaluation of perhaps thousands of Second Amendment rights cases across the country.
In a 2024 decision upholding a law banning domestic abusers from owning guns, the court sought to clarify how closely modern laws must align with historic laws to be constitutional.
But lower courts remain “split about what the analogy should be,” Ruben said.
Adam Winkler, a professor at UCLA School of Law, said the confusion created the possibility for judges to impose their own preferences. Winkler said judges appointed by Democratic presidents have upheld gun restrictions despite weak historical evidence, while judges appointed by Republicans have struck down gun restrictions because of a lack of historical “twins” — even though the Supreme Court said it wasn’t the norm.
“What we’ve seen is a lot of judicial activity in this area,” he says. “The Supreme Court has not provided much helpful guidance.”
Can the Court Avoid Second Amendment Decisions?
However, it is possible that the justices will rule on Hemani’s case without clarifying the constitutionality of gun regulations.
“This case is being billed as the court’s next great Second Amendment battle,” Joel Johnson, a former Justice Department attorney and professor at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, said in a filing supporting Hemani. “But there’s no need for that.”
Lawyers for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Hemani both argue that the law’s “unlawful user” clause is unacceptably vague and should be removed. The law does not specify, for example, how much marijuana a person must smoke, how often, or how recently a person is prohibited from owning a gun.
“It’s simply impossible for the average person to understand what is prohibited,” said Brandon Baskey, director of the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. The ACLU is one of the legal organizations representing Hemani.
“I think the government’s position really confuses the idea of drug use and drug abuse,” Baskey said.
The Justice Department says a person must be a “habitual” user to be prohibited from owning a gun. But Hemani’s lawyers argue that this is contrary to what the government has said in the past and that it has not yet been defined.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has long interpreted the law to be triggered by a single drug possession conviction or failed drug test within the past year, but it now wants the test to be an “ongoing pattern of use.”
Because of this issue, it’s difficult to predict how significant the case will be in further elaboration as gun control passes through constitutional law, said Winkler, author of “Gunfights: The Battle for the Right to Bear Arms in America.”
“I don’t know if a court would find exit ambiguity attractive,” Winkler said. “The court could rule based on ambiguity and have no effect on Second Amendment principles.”
