The Supreme Court on Thursday found that a Texas man could not be prosecuted under a federal law that prohibits regular users of controlled substances, such as marijuana, from possessing firearms.
In a unanimous decision, the justices found that the law’s “habitual user” provision was inconsistent with the Constitution’s right to bear arms.
“We appreciate that drugs and guns can sometimes make for a dangerous mix,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote in the majority’s opinion. But Gorsuch wrote that the law could not be squared with the court’s strict standard that firearm restrictions must be rooted in the nation’s “tradition.”
“And, apart from pointing to habitual drunkard laws, the government has not even attempted to prove that any other specific historical principle might justify its prosecution in this case,” Gorsuch wrote.
Yet Gorsuch cautioned that the court’s decision did not cover laws that ban drug “addicts” or “those presently intoxicated” from possessing a gun. The government could still pursue them if it had “proof that the defendant’s use of marijuana (or any other drug) renders him a danger to himself or others,” he added.
The case concerned Ali Hemani, a Texas man whose house was raided by federal officers in August 2022. They found a Glock 9mm handgun and 60 grams of marijuana. Hemani acknowledged he used marijuana “about every other day.”
Prosecutors charged Hemani with being an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance under a section of the Gun Control Act of 1968.
Lower courts dismissed Hemani’s case, saying the law violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. The government appealed to the Supreme Court.
In 2024, a jury found President Joe Biden’s son Hunter guilty of violating the same law. Prosecutors had said that Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs while in possession of a firearm. But similar to Hemani’s defense team, Hunter Biden’s attorneys argued that the charge violated his Second Amendment rights — an argument the judge in Hunter Biden’s case rejected.
The issue before the court was whether the law met a strict Second Amendment standard that any gun restriction must be consistent with the “nation’s historical tradition.” The Supreme Court established that exacting standard in the 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which upended how lower courts interpret the constitutionality of gun restrictions.
Arguments in Hemani’s case featured unusual discussions about drugs — the sleeping medication Ambien and the power hallucinogen ayahuasca — and the nation’s founders’ heavy drinking habits. The government argued that the legal provision banning habitual drug users from possessing guns withstood the high court’s new Second Amendment test, citing founding-era laws that took guns away from “habitual drunkards.”
But in his opinion, Gorsuch disagreed. He wrote that the government’s argument “misapprehends” the purpose of those laws, which “targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways.”
He added, “By their own terms, laws like these did not seek to protect the public from violence so much as to protect habitual drunkards from themselves and their families from financial devastation.”
The case could affect a significant share of the population. In a 2024 government survey, more than 15 percent of Americans age 12 or older reported having used marijuana in the past month. More than 17 million people reported using the drug on a nearly daily basis, a study published in 2024 found.
As dozens of states have legalized cannabis in some form, the Trump administration has loosened restrictions on marijuana and reclassified it as a lower-risk drug. President Donald Trump has also ordered more access to psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, the compound found in “magic mushrooms.”
Civil libertarians welcomed the decision, saying it would prevent the government from imposing arbitrary penalties on the millions of Americans who use marijuana casually.
“The court has sent a strong message that the government cannot criminalize the conduct of large numbers of people by making categorical and unfounded assumptions about whether they are dangerous,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Hemani.
The case is United States v. Hemani.
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