The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to take up whether a federal crime that bans gun possession for drug users is constitutional.
At the Trump administration’s urging, the justices will wade into this issue this term, making it the latest front in the battle over the Second Amendment. A decision is expected by next summer.
“This is the archetypal case for this Court’s review,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court filings.
Federal law prohibits anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from possessing a firearm. Violations carry up to 10 years in prison.
The charge is prosecuted regularly. U.S. Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson, an appointee of former President Obama, recently noted in an opinion that judges are adjudicating the cases “daily across the country.”
A jury convicted Hunter Biden on the charge last year for possessing a Colt Cobra revolver in 2018 while being addicted to crack cocaine. He had argued it violated the Second Amendment until his father, then-President Biden, pardoned him.
The Supreme Court’s announcement comes after it ran out of funding over the weekend because of the government shutdown. The court building is now closed to the public, but the justices’ work on pending cases is proceeding as normal.
The high court’s decision stands to impact the future of the federal crime and similar state-level measures the Justice Department says have been passed in more than 30 states.
Lower judges have split on the federal crime’s constitutionality in the wake of the Supreme Court’s expansion of gun rights in 2022.
The expansion requires gun control measures to be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Some judges have since ruled the crime is unconstitutional in at least some applications.
The case marks the justices’ latest opportunity to provide more guidance on the bounds of its Second Amendment test.
Last year, the court ruled a neighboring federal provision that criminalizes gun possession for people under domestic violence restraining orders could survive.
And the new case adds to one already pending this term, which concerns the constitutionality of Hawaii’s law banning concealed carry on private property without the owner’s express permission.
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