The U.S. Supreme Court is facing decisions in two cases dealing with marijuana in the coming months.
Why It Matters
The legalization of marijuana, for medicinal and recreational purposes, continues facing legal questions. It remains a Schedule I drug in the eyes of the federal government, but dozens of states have either decriminalized or legalized its possession or sale. President Donald Trump this month said he would consider reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug.
Two cases the Supreme Court has been asked to weigh in on could have further implications for marijuana users or producers. One case asks the High Court to rule on whether marijuana users can be in possession of firearms, while the other is a more broad challenge to the federal regulations on marijuana.
What To Know
The Supreme Court justices have been asked to take up two marijuana-related cases, U.S. v. Hemani and Canna Provisions v. Bondi.
U.S. v. Hemani deals with whether a federal law prohibiting anyone who is using any controlled substance, which would include marijuana, from purchasing a firearm. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked for the case to be taken up by the court.
Canna Provisions v. Bondi deals with whether the Controlled Substances Act violates the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. A writ of certiorari has been filed asking the court to consider it.
Michael McAuliffe,a former federal prosecutor and former elected state attorney, told Newsweek that the core issues being litigated in these types of cases “involve important, but very specific, legal disputes that are separate from the general subject matter of the case.”
“The fact that the cases also involve a controversial topic, like marijuana use and regulation, is almost secondary,” he said. “Upcoming cases that address marijuana use/addiction and the prohibition of possessing firearms, and congressional authority to regulate intrastate cultivation and local sale of marijuana are fundamentally about the Second Amendment and the Commerce Clause.”
The legal issues at play in these cases “don’t require much judgment or parsing about marijuana itself,” he said.
“As a result, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to match views about marijuana with the results of the cases,” he said.
U.S. v. Hemani
The Hemani case centers around Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man who came under scrutiny from the FBI over alleged connections to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The government has accused him of using promethazine and cocaine in a court filing. He was prosecuted, however, for allegedly owning a firearm while being a regular use of marijuana.
Hemani’s attorneys have argued that he cannot be charged under that law because he was not intoxicated on marijuana when FBI agents found a firearm at his home.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled that the law cannot apply to him because precedence does “not support disarming a sober person based solely on past substance usage.”
The DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to clarify that regular users of illegal drugs should be prohibited from owning a firearm.
“The Fifth Circuit’s analysis also conflicts with the historical evidence marshaled above. For example, founding-era laws restricted the rights of drunkards, even during sober intervals, based on their habitual use of alcohol,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a petition for a writ of certiorari.
“And for about as long as legislatures have regulated drugs, they have prohibited the possession of arms by drug users and addicts—not just by persons under the influence of drugs. The Fifth Circuit did not address those laws in its historical analysis.”
Hemani’s attorneys responded to the petition by highlighting that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made a narrow decision and that the DOJ “failed before this Court to identify any founding-era laws or regulations that address the why and how of the restrictions imposed by the law.”
“Americans who lawfully use cannabis under state law and possess a firearm are in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) could be charged and sentenced to a term of imprisonment up to 15 years. Under Petitioner’s interpretation of the statute, millions of Americans are currently violating Section 922(g)(3) and do so on a continuing basis,” his attorneys warned.
Zachary Newland, an attorney representing Hemani, told Newsweek that he believes the government is seeking to gain “a ruling from the Supreme Court that any person who owns a firearm and is a ‘user’ of marijuana is committing a federal felony punishable by up to 15 years of federal prison time.”
The problem is that the term “user” is “so nebulous that a grandmother who uses marijuana legally under state law to treat her glaucoma is prohibited from owning a firearm under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3),” he said.
“The term is so vague that it could be interpreted to prohibit individuals who use marijuana once a year, once a month, or every day from exercising their Second Amendment rights,” he said.
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek that the case gives marijuana advocates “an opportunity to chip away at federal marijuana restrictions.”
“The Justices have been very pro-Second Amendment, so they would have to reconcile thar stance with Congress‘ outdated marijuana laws. They have upheld felon in possession restrictions, however, so it’s very possible they uphold the ban,” he said.
McAuliffe said the most interesting aspect of this case “isn’t that it involves marijuana, but that it appears to cut against the grain of the administration’s position regarding firearm regulation.”
“In most other fronts, the Trump leadership circle has vehemently opposed any firearm possession limitations,” he said.
A panel on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals this week handed down a ruling in a separate case that the law was incorrectly applied to a group of Florida residents that uses medical marijuana, Reuters reported. The court ruled that applying the law to theme would violate their Second Amendment rights.
Canna Provisions v. Bondi
The second case was filed by four businesses involved in marijuana production or distribution in Massachusetts, which has legalized marijuana. They have argued that the Controlled Substance Act is in violation of due process.
A petition has been submitted, but it’s unclear if the court will pick up this case.
“This case challenges Congress’s authority to criminalize the intrastate farming, possession, and sale of marijuana grown and sold entirely in Massachusetts and which is not fungible with interstate marijuana, is readily distinguishable from interstate marijuana, and is responsible for reducing the amount of interstate traffic in marijuana over the last decade,” the petition reads.
It challenges the court’s 2005 ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, which upheld Congress’ authority to criminalize cannabis. They argued that many changes have occurred since the case was decided that warrant its revisitation.
“Applicants allege that the express predicates of this Court’s Raich decision [a comprehensive Congressional scheme to ban totally the production and sale of marijuana, the danger that permitting intrastate production and possession would increase interstate marijuana commerce, and the conclusion at the time that all marijuana was fungible and that as a result intrastate and interstate products were indistinguishable] are no longer true,” the petition reads.
Rahmani said that broader marijuana prohibitions “will likely withstand the Court’s scrutiny notwithstanding state laws that have legalized the drug.”
“Expect the conservative majority to lean on the Supremacy Clause and the federal government’s current classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug with no medicinal value to continue to enforce federal marijuana laws in the face of inconsistent state law,” he said.
McAuliffe said the justices “could hold that regulating purely in-state activities [like cultivating marijuana for local sale] isn’t or is subject to congressional power without any conclusion about pot itself.”
What People Are Saying
Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek: “The Supreme Court has been largely deferential when it comes to Congressional regulation of controlled substances, including marijuana, under the Commerce Clause. Even purely intrastate marijuana laws have been upheld. The Court has resolved marijuana cases related to sentencing and immigration on statutory grounds rather than engaging in public policy arguments about legalization.”
Zachary Newland, an attorney representing Ali Danial Hemani, told Newsweek: “The government likens marijuana use to founding-era laws committing ‘lunatics’ to insane asylums. Perhaps this administration took Reefer Madness a little too seriously. The fact of the matter is over 50 million Americans have used marijuana and approximately 32 percent of Americans own firearms. In the government’s myopic view, millions of Americans are at this very moment committing federal felonies by exercising their Second Amendment rights and using marijuana.”
What Happens Next
How the justices approach these two cases is yet to be seen, but their decisions may have implications for some marijuana users. Supreme Court terms begin on the first Monday of October. This year, it’s October 6.
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