Every sitting justice agreed: the federal government cannot strip a person's gun rights simply because that person uses marijuana. The 9-0 ruling in United States v. Hemani, handed down Wednesday, dismantled a 57-year-old provision of the Gun Control Act and sent Second Amendment organizations into open celebration.
The decision marks one of the most sweeping firearms victories since the Court's landmark 2022 expansion of gun rights, and it arrived with a coalition that nobody in Washington could have predicted five years ago: the NRA, Gun Owners of America, and the ACLU all backed the winning side.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, rejecting the Department of Justice's argument that any regular marijuana use categorically makes a person violent or dangerous enough to lose Second Amendment protections. The statute at issue, enacted in 1968 as part of the Gun Control Act, made it a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison for "unlawful drug users" to possess firearms. Gorsuch found that the government failed to identify any historical tradition of firearm regulation that justified the modern ban, as Breitbart detailed in its coverage of the opinion.
The government had leaned heavily on colonial-era "habitual drunkard" statutes as a historical analogy. Gorsuch dismantled that comparison in blunt terms:
"The government's analogy fails under every measure it asks us to consider: The historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways."
The ruling was narrow in one respect. The Court left open whether laws barring addicts or people actively intoxicated while handling firearms remain constitutional. But on the core question of whether regular marijuana use alone justifies permanent disarmament, the answer was unanimous: no.
Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man, admitted he smoked marijuana roughly every other day. He legally purchased a Glock 9mm pistol and kept it securely stored at home. Federal prosecutors charged him under the Gun Control Act provision, treating his marijuana use as grounds to strip his firearms rights entirely. Fox News reported that Hemani's case drew unusual cross-ideological support from gun rights groups and civil liberties organizations alike.
During oral arguments earlier this year, Gorsuch pressed the government's attorney with a hypothetical that cut to the heart of the law's absurdity. He asked about a person who took "one gummy bear with a medical prescription in Colorado" every other day to help with sleep:
"What if he took one gummy bear with a medical prescription in Colorado? Let's say he had one to help him sleep every other day. Disarm him for life?"
The Justice Department's attorney, Sarah Harris, had argued that "the Second Amendment does not prohibit the government from temporarily disarming habitual marijuana users while they persist in frequent use." But that position found no takers on the bench. The New York Post noted that justices from both the conservative and liberal wings expressed skepticism about the law's vagueness during those arguments.
The statute the Court struck down is the same federal law used to convict Hunter Biden in 2024 for possessing a firearm while being a drug user. President Biden later pardoned his son, but the conviction itself rested on the provision that nine justices have now declared unconstitutional. The irony was not lost on legal observers: a law the Biden Justice Department once wielded against the president's own son has now been gutted by a Court that found it incompatible with the Second Amendment's original meaning.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who joined the unanimous opinion, had signaled her own doubts during oral arguments. She told the government's lawyer that the DOJ appeared to be "asking us to trust Congress' legislative judgment on whether unlawful drug users pose a high risk of misuse, but that this test doesn't provide us a way to check that in any meaningful sense."
The reaction from Second Amendment organizations was swift and emphatic. Amy Swearer of Advancing American Freedom framed the decision as a vindication of core constitutional principles, as the Daily Caller reported:
"The Court's decision today affirms one of the most basic tenets of the Second Amendment, the government may only disarm people whom it can prove are violent and unusually dangerous, based on individualized proof presented in legal proceedings."
That phrase, "individualized proof," is the legal core of the ruling. The government can no longer designate entire categories of people as too dangerous to own firearms without showing that a specific person poses a specific threat. For gun rights advocates, that principle has implications far beyond marijuana.
The ruling lands in a legal environment where Second Amendment wins at the Supreme Court have been stacking up, reshaping the boundaries of firearms regulation across the country.
The case produced one of the most unusual coalitions in recent Supreme Court history. The NRA, Gun Owners of America, and the ACLU all filed briefs supporting Hemani. Cannabis is now legal in some form in 40 states, and AP News reported that the case created alliances that cut across traditional political lines.
Cecillia Wang, the ACLU's National Legal Director, said the ruling "protects the rights of millions and curbs the government's ability to impose arbitrary and discriminatory penalties," noting that nearly half of Americans report marijuana use at some point in their lives.
Joe A. Bondy, chair of the NORML board, was more direct: "It's laughable to think that by outlawing cannabis users possessing firearms you'll minimize the problem with gun violence."
The Trump administration had defended the gun control measure, putting it in the rare position of opposing both the NRA and Gun Owners of America. The unanimous loss means the DOJ's theory of broad categorical disarmament has been rejected by every justice the administration might have hoped to persuade.
The Court was careful to draw boundaries. The opinion does not declare open season on all drug-related firearms restrictions. Laws targeting people who are actively intoxicated while possessing weapons, or who meet a clinical threshold for addiction that renders them dangerous, may survive future challenges. The justices left those questions for another day.
But the framework Gorsuch established requires the government to do more than point to a person's legal status as a drug user. It must demonstrate, with historical grounding and individualized evidence, that the specific restriction fits within the nation's tradition of firearms regulation. That standard will shape every gun case that reaches the federal courts for years.
The decision also does not resolve a separate Second Amendment case the Court is weighing involving a Hawaii law restricting handgun carrying on public-accessible private property, a dispute that could further define the boundaries of firearms rights outside the home.
Wednesday's ruling arrives during a period of intense judicial activity on gun rights. Federal courts across the country are working through challenges to state and federal firearms restrictions under the historical-tradition test the Supreme Court established in 2022. Some of those challenges have succeeded. A Florida appeals court recently struck down a concealed carry ban for 18-to-20-year-olds on similar constitutional grounds.
Others have gone the other way. The Eleventh Circuit upheld the federal machine gun ban earlier this year, rejecting a Second Amendment challenge and showing that courts are drawing lines even as they expand protections in other areas.
And the Court itself has shown it will not intervene in every gun rights dispute. It recently declined to hear a case involving a father who lost his gun rights over unpaid child support, letting a lower court ruling stand without comment.
The Washington Examiner reported that the ruling is being celebrated as a major win by both gun rights and marijuana advocates. But the practical fallout will take time to sort out. Federal prosecutors in districts across the country have pending cases built on the same statute. Defense attorneys in those cases now have a unanimous Supreme Court opinion to cite in motions to dismiss.
States with their own drug-user firearm restrictions will need to assess whether their laws can survive under the Gorsuch framework. And Congress, if it wants to reimpose restrictions on drug-using gun owners, will have to craft legislation that meets the Court's demand for historical grounding and individualized dangerousness findings.
Investigators and prosecutors will also need to determine how the ruling interacts with existing plea agreements and prior convictions under the now-unconstitutional provision. Authorities have not publicly confirmed how many active federal cases rely on the struck-down statute, but the number is almost certainly substantial given the breadth of the law and the scale of marijuana use nationwide.
Nine justices told the federal government the same thing: you cannot erase a constitutional right by labeling an entire class of Americans as dangerous without proof. Whether Washington listens is another question entirely.
