US Supreme Court narrows federal ban on gun ownership for marijuana users

The Supreme Court said an admitted casual drug user has the right to possess a firearm - a twist for other high-profile cases

Justices side with a casual marijuana user challenging his ban under legislation used to prosecute Hunter Biden

The Supreme Court unanimously struck down a law banning "habitual" marijuana users from owning firearms on Thursday.The court ruled the law, which was used to prosecute Hunter Biden, was overly broad and improperly deprived individuals of their right to possess a firearm in their homes.The case involved a Texas man charged with a felony when FBI agents raiding his home found a handgun he kept for self-defense, and he also admitted to smoking marijuana every other day.In an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court held that the government's prosecution of Ali Hemani under a federal law prohibiting firearm possession by unlawful users of controlled substances violated the Second Amendment. Two justices, Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan, concurred only in the judgment.The federal government argued that people who regularly use illegal drugs could be disarmed based on historical laws that restricted the rights of so-called "habitual drunkards," but the court said the old laws the government relied on were too different from the modern gun restriction to justify it."The government's analogy fails under every measure it asks us to consider," Gorsuch wrote. "The historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways."The court said the old laws focused on people whose substance abuse left them unable to manage their lives, while the federal law broadly covered regular drug users regardless of whether they posed a threat to anyone.Gorsuch noted that prosecutors never alleged Hemani was addicted to marijuana, had used a firearm while intoxicated, threatened anyone, or posed a danger to himself or others. Instead, the government relied solely on his admission that he used marijuana "about every other day."The opinion also questioned the government's argument that marijuana users are categorically dangerous, pointing to the federal government's own actions in reducing marijuana enforcement and efforts to move marijuana to a less restrictive drug schedule. The court noted that most states now permit some form of marijuana use."The federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them," Gorsuch wrote of the growth in marijuana use and legalization across the country.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a federal gun law cannot be broadly applied to all illegal drug users, siding with a Texas man who admitted to regularly using marijuana while keeping a firearm for self-defense.