Supreme Court Rules 9-0 That Casual Marijuana Users Cannot Be Automatically Disarmed

The Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling Thursday in United States v. Hemani, the case of a Texas man who used marijuana a few times a week and owned a handgun, holding that the federal law used to strip his Second Amendment rights was applied unconstitutionally against him.

All nine justices agreed. The opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The government cannot automatically disarm a person because they occasionally use marijuana.

The ruling lands on the same federal statute, 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3), which bars "any person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" from possessing a firearm, that was used to convict Hunter Biden in Delaware in June 2024.

Biden was found guilty on three felony counts under that law before his father, then-President Joe Biden, pardoned him.

The Supreme Court's decision Thursday does not retroactively affect Hunter Biden's case, which ended in the pardon, but it tells the rest of the legal system that the prosecution's theory in both cases would not survive Second Amendment scrutiny.

Gorsuch's opinion opens with a sentence that captures the entire case. "Ali Hemani uses marijuana a few times a week.

That fact alone, the government says, means he is automatically" disarmed. The Court's response was unanimous: that theory is wrong.

Who Is Ali Hemani?

Ali Hemani is a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan, born in Texas, who spent most of his life living in the Dallas area with his parents.

In 2022, the FBI, investigating Hemani and his family for suspected terrorism-related activities, searched the family home.

Hemani cooperated throughout: he surrendered the pistol he kept in the house, pointed agents to marijuana on the property and consented to an interview in which he told law enforcement he used marijuana approximately every other day.

More than six months after the search, the federal government charged him under §922(g)(3).

The theory was simple: he used marijuana, marijuana is a controlled substance, controlled substance users cannot legally possess firearms, he possessed a firearm, therefore he was a criminal.

There was no allegation that Hemani was violent. There was no individual assessment of whether his marijuana use made him dangerous. The prosecution rested entirely on the fact of drug use.

Hemani challenged the law on two grounds: it violated the Second Amendment, and it was unconstitutionally vague, the statute does not define "unlawful user," leaving open questions about whether someone who smokes marijuana once a month qualifies, or once a year, or once a decade.

His lawyers argued that enforcing the law as the government sought to enforce it "would empower the government to deprive tens of millions of Americans who pose little if any risk of firearm misuse of a fundamental constitutional right."

More than 15 percent of Americans aged 12 and older used marijuana in 2024, according to federal surveys. Marijuana is legal in some form in more than 40 states.

The Supreme Court agreed with Hemani on the Second Amendment question. It did not reach the vagueness question.

The Bruen Test And Why This Ruling Was Coming

Thursday's decision is the latest consequence of the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which created a new constitutional test for evaluating gun regulations.

Under Bruen, for a gun regulation to survive constitutional challenge, the government must show that it is "relevantly similar" to regulations that existed at the time the Constitution was adopted in the late 18th century.

The historical inquiry is the test. If there is no historical analog, the regulation is presumptively unconstitutional.

The government tried to satisfy the Bruen test in Hemani by pointing to historical "habitual drunkard" laws, legal provisions from the founding era that in some cases restricted the rights of people who were persistently intoxicated.

The argument was that these historical laws showed a tradition of disarming people whose judgment was impaired by substances.

Gorsuch rejected the analogy directly: the habitual drunkard laws "differ dramatically" from the modern statute, which applies not only to addicts but to anyone who uses a controlled substance at all.

"We appreciate that drugs and guns can sometimes make for a dangerous mix," Gorsuch wrote.

But the Court found that the government could not carry its historical burden under the Bruen framework.

The theory that marijuana use alone, without individualized evidence of dangerousness, automatically removes Second Amendment rights has no sufficient historical grounding.

What The Decision Does And Does Not Change

Gorsuch was specific about the ruling's limited scope.

It does not strike down §922(g)(3) in its entirety, the law still exists. It does not address whether the government could prosecute someone under the same statute if it provided individualized proof that the specific defendant's drug use rendered them dangerous.

It does not address banning people who are actively intoxicated from possessing firearms.

It does not address the felon-in-possession law, §922(g)(1), which remains fully intact.

It does not address whether Congress could pass a different, more precisely targeted law following a legislative finding that specific drugs make their users dangerous.

What it does address, and what it categorically rejects, is the theory that drug use alone is sufficient to strip constitutional rights.

The government maintained that anyone who uses marijuana regularly is "categorically violent and dangerous without any further showing." Nine justices said that is not the law.

The concurrences, Thomas separately, Jackson and Sotomayor jointly, and Alito and Kagan together in judgment, added different perspectives on how the Bruen framework should be applied and whether it is working correctly as a constitutional test.

Justice Jackson's concurrence, joined by Sotomayor, reiterated her view that the Bruen history-and-tradition test is "vulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application" and that the Court should return to a means-end scrutiny approach.

Justice Alito's concurrence in the judgment, joined by Kagan, addressed narrower ground. All nine reached the same bottom line.