Supreme Court to review federal ban on drug users owning guns

The Supreme Court said Monday that it will take up a challenge to the federal ban on gun possession by drug users in a case that advocates hope will bring clarity to the nation’s chaotic landscape of marijuana and firearms laws.

Federal law has long designated unlawful drug users as prohibited people when it comes to guns, but lower courts are increasingly grappling with what, exactly, it means to be a drug user.

The case before the judges involves Ali Hemani, who disputed that the marijuana and cocaine found in his home made him a habitual user and dangerous person who forfeited his Second Amendment rights.

Lower courts, including the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sided with Mr. Hemani. Because he wasn’t intoxicated at the time authorities found him with the guns, he shouldn’t have been charged, the court ruled.

The Justice Department asked the high court to weigh in and settle the matter.

“The case presents an important Second Amendment issue that affects hundreds of prosecutions every year: whether the government may disarm individuals who habitually use unlawful drugs but are not necessarily under the influence while possessing a firearm,” U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in briefs to the justices.

Unlawful drug users is one of nine categories of people specifically prohibited from possessing firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968. Others include felons, fugitives, illegal immigrants, the mentally infirm and those subject to domestic violence protection orders.

In one recent prosecution, Hunter Biden, son of the former president, was convicted under the unlawful drug user provision. His father issued him a pardon for those crimes.

The list of prohibited people has received new scrutiny since the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Bruen case three years ago.

That decision overturned a state law that made it difficult to obtain a concealed carry permit. In the ruling, the justices said that to survive constitutional scrutiny, gun control laws had to be the kinds of restrictions countenanced by the nation’s Founders.

Courts have said that laws barring dangerous people from owning guns were common at the founding, but deciding who exactly qualifies as dangerous has been contentious.

Last year, the Supreme Court upheld as constitutional the federal prohibition on someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order.

Cases challenging the ban on illegal immigrants possessing guns are also winding their way through the courts.

The drug ban has drawn the most attention, particularly with the evolving situation around marijuana. Its use is still largely illegal at the federal level, though the vast majority of Americans live in states where marijuana has been decriminalized or legalized.

The Second Amendment Foundation, which backs gun rights, cheered the high court’s decision to take the case.

“Both the district court and the Fifth Circuit agreed that the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation supported only the temporary disarming of individuals while they were presently intoxicated, not permanently as the result of their past use,” the group said.

Mr. Hemani’s case stems from an investigation by authorities who found cocaine, marijuana and evidence that he was abusing promethazine, an antihistamine that has found an illegal market as a relaxer drug. He also had two firearms.

He was indicted in 2023 on a charge of being in possession of a gun while also a user of a controlled substance.

His attorneys argued that the ban, written in 1968, has no “historical analogue” from the founding era, particularly when applied to Mr. Hemani’s case. Mr. Hemani argued that he was not a dangerous user because he was not intoxicated at the time the guns were found.

Judge Amos Mazzant agreed and dismissed the indictment last year.

In January, the 5th Circuit upheld that decision, indicating that the law would be valid only in cases where someone was impaired by drugs at the time of possession.

Other appeals courts have reached different decisions.

The 8th Circuit struck down the law on somewhat different grounds. The 7th Circuit upheld the law. The 3rd Circuit, in a ruling in July, largely upheld the ban but said courts must conduct an independent assessment of each case to determine whether the defendant’s situation fits.

Mr. Sauer said that made Mr. Hemani’s situation the “archetypal case” for the justices to weigh in and settle the issue.

Mr. Hemani’s attorneys had urged the court not to take the case.