Supreme Court signals it will back marijuana user who was charged with owning a gun

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court appeared likely Monday to curb the government’s ability to disarm a frequent marijuana user, though several of the justices were also wary of completely undermining a 1968 law that was intended to ensure that Americans addicted to drugs don’t have access to firearms.

Over the course of nearly two hours of argument, a majority of justices — both conservative and liberal — signaled that they believed federal prosecutors overreached when they charged a Texas man with violating a federal law that bars people who are an “unlawful user” of drugs from owning guns.

In defending the law, the Trump administration argued the prohibition was similar to public drunkenness laws that were widely in force during the colonial era. But that kicked off a series of difficult questions from the justices about what types of drugs, and at what amount, would render a person too dangerous to own a weapon.

“John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. James Madsion reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day,” conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch told the attorney representing the Trump administration. “Are they all habitual drunkards who would be property disarmed for life under your theory?”

What if a person takes “one gummy bear with a medical prescription in Colorado?” Gorsuch pressed. “Disarm him for life?”

Sarah Harris, principal deputy solicitor general, said that person would fall under the category of a “habitual user” but that they would not likely be prosecuted. Trump signed an executive order in December to expedite the reclassification of marijuana, a move that would not legalize it but would increase research on medical uses.

The case centers on Ali Danial Hemani, a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan, who was indicted in 2023 on a single count of violating the federal anti-guns-and-drugs law. Though the Justice Department accused Hemani of many things in its appeal last year, his indictment dealt only with an FBI search that turned up a Glock 9mm pistol and 60 grams of pot.

The DOJ said Hemani used marijuana about every other day.

President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted in 2024 of the same law, though that case involved his addiction to crack cocaine. He was later pardoned by the president during his final days in office.

Roughly half of US states have legalized small amounts of marijuana for recreational use and an even higher share of states allow the drug to be used medicinally. And, Gorsuch noted, the federal government has not anything to stop the shifting legal landscape around pot.

“What do we do with the fact that marijuana is sort of illegal and sort of isn’t, and that the federal government itself is conflicted on this?” Gorsuch said.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, noted that the law applies far more broadly than just marijuana. It covers any drug classified by the federal government as a controlled substance, including prescription medications.

Barrett asked whether the government’s definitions would rope in someone who took their partner’s prescription Ambien to help them sleep, even though they did not have a prescription themselves. Harris acknowledged the government’s definitions would cover that person because they were taking the drug illegally.

“I agree with you … that legislatures can regulate to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous peoples,” Barrett said at one point.

But when it comes to some of the drugs at issue in the law’s enforcement, Barrett said, including marijuana, “I just don’t see anything in the scheme that actually reflects Congress’ judgment that this makes someone more dangerous.”

The Justice Department said only about 300 people have been are charged with violating the law annually. A conviction can carry a 15-year prison sentence.

Some pushback from Roberts

But there was some pushback from a few conservatives, particularly from Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, who seemed especially concerned with having courts make individual determinations about which drugs present dangers sufficient to disarm users, or whether individual people charged with a crime are, in fact, addicted.

At one point, Roberts suggested that Hemani’s argument took a “fairly cavalier approach to the necessary consideration of expertise and the judgments we leave to Congress and the executive branch” about the dangerousness of drugs. In each case, he said, “you don’t get to go in and re-weigh the legislative determination.”

Erin Murphy, a veteran Supreme Court attorney representing Hemani, countered that if Congress wants to make a categorical prohibition on gun owners users certain drugs, then the government needs to demonstrate there was some historic analogue to that prohibition under the Second Amendment.

Much of the argument Monday was wrapped up in the standards set by blockbuster gun cases handed down by the Supreme Court in recent years. In a landmark 2022 decision, the court made it easier for Americans to carry handguns in public and required gun prohibitions to have some connection to US founding-era laws to sustain Second Amendment challenges. It then clarified that historical test in a decision two years later, upholding a law that bars people who are the subject of domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns when they have been found to pose a credible safety threat.

The question of how much history is enough to justify a modern gun law continues to complicate Second Amendment cases in lower courts and was central to the debate for Hemani. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a member of the court’s liberal wing, repeatedly seemed to question the wisdom of the historic test the court laid out in 2022 given cases like Hemani’s.

“I don’t understand how this works any more in any meaningful way,” Jackson said of the historic test.

Denies related case

Earlier Monday, the court declined to take up a series of cases questioning whether the same law can be used to bar Americans convicted of non-violent felonies from owning guns.

Without comment, the court declined to hear an appeal from Melynda Vincent, who was convicted in 2008 of violating a federal bank fraud statute for writing a bad check at a Utah grocery store for $498.12 and was sentenced to probation for the crime. She wanted to keep a firearm for protection but the federal law prohibiting felons from having guns prevented her from doing so.

The court has been flooded with appeals on that issue over the past year, and more cases are likely.

In Hemani’s case, a federal district court in Texas dismissed the charge against him. The conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, ruling in a brief decision that the historical record points only to laws that barred guns for Americans who are actively intoxicated or under the influence of drugs at the time of their arrest.

A decision is expected by the end of June.

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