The Supreme Court will hear its second of two significant gun rights cases this term on Monday when the justices grapple with gun rights for users of drugs, such as marijuana, in a case that has brought together unusual coalitions on both sides of the question.
The appeal in United States v. Hemani was brought by the Justice Department. The case focuses on the constitutionality of a federal statute barring firearm possession for any person who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” The DOJ has asked the high court to reverse an appeals court’s finding that the law violated Ali Hemani’s Second Amendment right to bear arms, and to toss out a single-count indictment on that charge.
DOJ wants to keep current gun rights restrictions on drug users
The Justice Department under the Trump administration has usually petitioned against gun control laws, but in the Hemani case, the DOJ has argued that a prohibition on guns for drug users is one of the few restrictions permissible while upholding constitutional rights.
“Given the Second Amendment’s central role in our constitutional scheme, the government bears a significant burden in justifying restrictions on that right. Specifically, the government must show that the challenged regulation ‘is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.’ That is a stringent test, not a ‘regulatory blank check,’” the DOJ said in its brief. “This case presents narrow circumstances where the government can satisfy that rigorous burden.”
The Justice Department argued there are clear historical roots for laws allowing restrictions on drug users possessing guns, noting that the law’s restriction is “temporary and limited: a person regains his ability to possess arms as soon as he stops habitually using drugs.”
“All agree that there is a deeply rooted history and tradition of temporarily barring people from possessing firearms based on their use of alcohol. Further, all agree that this history and tradition would encompass the use of controlled substances such as marijuana,” the DOJ argued in its brief.
The DOJ also argued that the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, which found that the government may only limit gun rights when it “proves that a defendant was presently intoxicated while possessing a firearm,” is an “erroneous conclusion [that] ignores the vagrancy, civil-commitment, and surety laws that historically restricted the rights of habitual drunkards.”
The Trump Justice Department, in its efforts to uphold the law, has garnered support from some anti-gun groups, which are typically on the opposite side of DOJ’s arguments in gun cases. The anti-gun groups Brady and Giffords filed a joint brief urging the high court to uphold the federal law.
“Since the Founding, legislatures have exercised their power to protect against potential threats to public safety by restricting certain categories of people from accessing firearms. Courts have routinely upheld these categorical restrictions, recognizing that the individual right to bear arms is not absolute and that these reasonable public safety regulations are entirely consistent with this Nation’s historical regulatory tradition,” the brief said.
The groups filed a brief against the DOJ’s position in the other high-profile gun case this term, Wolford v. Lopez, but in this case urged the justices to back the DOJ’s position while also asking the high court not to “call into question the centuries-old national practice of allowing legislatures to enact such prohibitions and regulators to rely on them to advance public safety.”
Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department successfully defended a federal law that banned guns for people under domestic violence restraining orders. The 8-1 majority in the 2024 case United States v. Rahimi ruled that the law satisfied the standard set with the 2022 ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which found gun regulations must conform with the country’s history and tradition of gun laws.
Hemani centers his claims around Second Amendment rights of marijuana users
Hemani’s brief centers on how his admission that he uses marijuana, which is legal in some states, multiple times a week, led to his federal charge for unlawfully possessing a firearm, claiming it violates his Second Amendment rights.
Hemani’s family home was the subject of a search by the FBI in August 2022, where they found his firearm, along with roughly 60 grams of marijuana and 0.95 grams of cocaine. He told FBI agents that he consumed marijuana “about every other day.” He was later charged under the federal law at the center of the case based on his mention of regular marijuana consumption, but both a federal district court and the Fifth Circuit appeals court tossed the indictment as violating the Second Amendment.
In their brief to the Supreme Court, Hemani’s lawyers center the case around the question of whether the federal law, as applied to marijuana users, violates the Second Amendment.
“The only question before this Court is whether §922(g)(3) is constitutional as applied to someone who admits to consuming marijuana a few times a week,” the brief said. “It is not.”
Hemani’s brief argues that the law’s “unlawful user” provision is too vague, but that even if that part of the law is not void for being too vague, the government may only restrict a person’s gun rights while they are presently intoxicated. The brief claims that comparisons to historical laws barring gun possession by habitual drunkards “did not cover anyone who consumed any quantity of alcohol ‘habitually,’ but instead covered only those who habitually abused alcohol to the point of frequent intoxication.”
“The federal government’s draconian approach thus not only flouts historical tradition, but makes it an outlier today. As most states grappling with the dangers of mixing drugs and firearms have recognized, there are ways to address that serious problem consistent with the Constitution,” the brief said.
“But prohibiting anyone who regularly consumes any amount of marijuana of the right to keep a firearm in the home for self-defense is not one of them,” the brief continued.
Hemani’s arguments have garnered support from pro-gun groups, which have filed briefs in support of the challenge to the federal law. The National Rifle Association’s brief, filed with the FPC Action Foundation, argued that it is unlawful for the government to restrict a person’s Second Amendment rights when they are not intoxicated, while conceding that, while intoxicated, they may be restricted.
“To justify firearms prohibition for marijuana users when they are not intoxicated, the government must prove that the ban is consistent with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. That tradition supports restrictions on the use of firearms while intoxicated, but it does not support disarming individuals when they are sober merely because they sometimes use intoxicants,” the NRA’s brief said.
SUPREME COURT COULD LOAD UP ON GUN CASES THIS TERM
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in United States v. Hemani at 10 a.m. Monday, with a decision in the case expected by the end of June, when the current Supreme Court term ends.
By the end of June, the justices are also expected to issue a ruling in the other gun case, Wolford v. Lopez, regarding Hawaii’s “vampire” gun law. The high court is also weighing various petitions for gun cases, which it could elect to hear in its next term that begins in October.