The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday in a Second Amendment case that could determine whether the federal government can strip gun rights from Americans who use illegal drugs but are not under the influence at the time they possess a firearm.
The case, United States v. Hemani, is the second gun-rights case of the 2025-26 term, and it puts the Trump administration in the unusual position of asking the justices for permission to enforce a federal firearms restriction.
The case began when FBI agents searched the home of Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man. Agents found a Glock 19 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine. Hemani told FBI agents he used marijuana roughly every other day.
Based on that admission, Hemani was indicted under a federal law making it a crime for anyone who is "an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" to have a gun. A knowing violation is a felony carrying up to 15 years in prison.
SCOTUSblog reports that Hemani moved to dismiss the charge, arguing the law violated the Second Amendment as applied to him. U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant agreed and dismissed the indictment, relying on a 5th Circuit decision holding the law unconstitutional when applied to someone who may have been a habitual drug user but was not shown to be under the influence at the time he possessed the firearm.
The government appealed but conceded that, under controlling 5th Circuit precedent, the dismissal should stand. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld Mazzant's ruling in a brief, unsigned opinion. The federal government then petitioned the Supreme Court in June, and the justices granted review in October.
The administration's posture in this case is worth understanding precisely. In January, the Trump administration sided with Hawaii gun owners challenging a state law that required them to get express permission from private property owners before bringing firearms onto that property. Now, in Hemani, the same administration is asking the justices to uphold a federal firearms prohibition. These positions are not contradictory. They reflect a government enforcing the law as written while recognizing the Second Amendment's weight.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer acknowledged in the government's merits brief that the Second Amendment has a "central role in our constitutional scheme" and that "the government bears a significant burden in justifying restrictions on" the right to have a gun. But Sauer argued Hemani's case "presents narrow circumstances where the government can satisfy that rigorous burden."
The government framed the question as "a narrow one": whether the federal ban on gun possession by unlawful drug users applies only while someone is actively intoxicated, or whether it also covers habitual users of illegal drugs.
To justify the broader reading under the Supreme Court's 2022 framework in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which requires the government to show a historical tradition supporting any firearms restriction, the administration pointed to founding-era laws targeting "habitual drunkards." The government's brief described a "highly robust body of much harsher founding-era restrictions on the rights of" that group, arguing those laws were grounded in the idea that habitual intoxicant users posed a greater risk of criminal or violent conduct. Punishments for habitual drunkards could include jail time or confinement to a workhouse, the brief argued, while a single episode of public drunkenness "was punishable by a small fine or a few hours in the stocks."
The government also noted that "at least 43 States, the District of Columbia, and all five territories have enacted similar laws restricting the possession of firearms by drug users and drug addicts." For any close cases, the administration pointed to a separate federal law allowing individuals who would otherwise be prohibited from owning firearms to seek permission from the U.S. attorney general.
Hemani's merits brief struck back on two fronts. First, his attorneys argued the statute is unconstitutionally vague, meaning it fails to give ordinary people adequate notice of the conduct it criminalizes. The phrase "unlawful user," Hemani contended, does not specify how often, how recently, or how substantially someone must use illegal drugs to fall within the prohibition. The federal government, Hemani argued, grafts the word "habitual" onto the statute even though that word does not appear in the law's text. In his merits brief, Hemani wrote that "the government does not say what it thinks 'habitual user' means, other than that it is broad enough to capture Mr. Hemani's marijuana use." That absence, he argued, "is powerful evidence that the statute 'fails to give ordinary people fair notice of the conduct it punishes.'"
Second, Hemani argued the government's historical analogues do not hold up. He conceded that "the government may prohibit people from carrying firearms while intoxicated" and that, with "appropriate safeguards," it may also bar people addicted to drugs or alcohol from possessing guns. But Hemani drew a hard line at the government's broader claim. In his brief, he told the justices:
"But there has never been a tradition in this country of stripping anyone who uses an intoxicating substance with some degree of frequency of the right to keep a firearm in the home. To conclude otherwise 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."
The founding-era "habitual drunkard" laws the government cited, Hemani argued, "are far afield." He contended those restrictions applied to people whose drinking rendered them unable to function, not to anyone who consumed alcohol regularly. To label every regular drinker a "drunkard," Hemani suggested, "would have been anomalous to early Americans" and "would have labeled a significant portion of the populace 'drunkards.'"
Hemani also argued that when states later enacted their own restrictions on gun ownership by drug users, those laws focused on addiction, not casual or regular use. States did not, he argued, strip firearms rights from drug users "regardless of the frequency or quantity of use, of the right to keep arms and bear them while sober." Taken to its logical conclusion, Hemani warned, the government's position could mean that "anyone who regularly takes a sleep gummy" or "regularly has a beer with dinner" could lose the right to keep a firearm at home.
The government's fallback argument, that people wrongly swept up by the statute could seek restoration of their gun rights from the attorney general, drew sharp criticism in Hemani's brief. He told the justices that "the prospect that rights may be restored has no bearing on whether the government may take them away in the first place." And even if the process were relevant, Hemani noted, it "has been on ice for over 30 years."
The Department of Justice website currently indicates only that applications to restore gun rights "will be available online soon," pending a "final rule."
A safety valve that has not functioned for three decades is not much of a safety valve at all.
The Supreme Court's task Monday is to determine how the Bruen framework, which demands a historical tradition supporting any firearms restriction, applies to a statute that criminalizes gun ownership by "unlawful users" of controlled substances.
The justices will need to resolve whether the historical record supports only the narrow prohibition on possessing firearms while actually intoxicated, or whether it extends to anyone the government considers a habitual drug user, even when sober and at home.
The stakes are real and concrete. The federal statute carries up to 15 years in prison. And the government's own brief cannot define, with any precision, what "habitual user" means. If the justices uphold the broader reading, they will hand the federal government a tool with no clear boundary, one that could be aimed at millions of Americans based on a label the statute itself does not use. The Second Amendment demands more than that.
