WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday appeared sympathetic to a marijuana user's challenge to a federal law that bars people who consume illegal drugs from having firearms.
Gun rights advocates argue the law falls afoul of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.
Based on oral arguments, it appears a majority of the court could rule in favor of Texas-based Ali Danial Hemani, an alleged regular user of marijuana who had a handgun at his home in the Dallas area when it was searched by the FBI in 2022. The ruling could be limited in scope, based on concerns that prosecutors could not show that Hermani's use of marijuana made him a danger to society.
The case puts a spotlight on the Trump administration’s mixed messaging on gun rights. Although the Justice Department is defending the law in court, to the annoyance of Second Amendment advocates, it has in other areas backed challenges to firearms restrictions.
Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, was convicted under the same law in June 2024 before being pardoned by his father.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority that often backs gun rights, most notably in a 2022 ruling that for the first time recognized a right to bear arms outside the home. That decision spurred a new wave of challenges to existing gun laws, although the Supreme Court appeared to take a step back two years later when it upheld a federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms.
The 2022 ruling set a new test for Second Amendment restrictions that requires courts to look at the history and tradition of gun regulation during the founding era to determine if they are lawful now.
Complicating the court's consideration of Hermani's case is that millions of Americans regularly consume marijuana, which is legally available in many states. Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, but the Trump administration has taken steps toward reclassifying it.
Monday's oral argument showed again that the Supreme Court's 2022 ruling has been difficult to implement, with the justices who were in the majority then now appearing to have differing views on whether Hermani should prevail.
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the majority in the earlier case, questioned whether the law could be upheld based on comparisons to historical laws that could temporarily disarm "habitual drunkards."
Like other justices, she noted that just because some uses of a drug are illegal under federal law does not mean that it renders a user dangerous. She cited, for example, someone who takes the sleeping aid Ambien or anti-anxiety medication Xanax without having a prescription, which is illegal.
"Is it the government's position that if I unlawfully use Ambien or I unlawfully use Xanax, then I become dangerous?" she asked Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris.
"What is the government's evidence that using marijuana a couple times a week makes someone dangerous?" Barrett added.
In response, Harris said that when classifying drugs under federal law, the government takes into account various factors, including potential for abuse, and has concluded that marijuana and other drugs "have particular mind-altering effects on the body that can create a serious hazard for firearms use."
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, another member of the 2022 majority, also probed Harris on the comparison with "habitual drunkards," noting that during the founding era, the bar was high to meet such a description.
He cited the drinking habits of various Founding Fathers.
"John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn't much of a user of alcohol. He only had three or four glasses of wine a night," Gorsuch noted.
As such, he wondered if Hemani would even count as a habitual user of marijuana because he used it a few days a week.
At least one justice who dissented in the 2022 case, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, appeared sympathetic to Hermani's arguments. Again focused on the habitual drunkard laws, she noted that they focused not just on intoxication but how unregulated alcohol use could affect people's lives more broadly.
"All the definitions around habitual alcoholics centered around not merely taking the drug, but the potential effect it had on you, because you couldn't control it and would continue to use it," she said.
That, she added, is very different from someone who uses marijuana occasionally, potentially not even in the same location as their firearm.
Chief Justice John Roberts was one of a handful of justices who questioned the practical impact of a limited ruling that would open the door to defendants challenging their prosecutions under the law on a drug-by-drug basis.
Such a ruling "takes a fairly cavalier approach to the necessary consideration of expertise and the judgments we leave to Congress and the executive branch," he said.
Both he and Justice Samuel Alito, both in the 2022 majority, appeared to have reservations about ruling in Hermani's favor.
Lower courts are divided over whether the restriction on gun ownership for frequent drug users infringes on the Second Amendment.
Hemani successfully challenged his indictment in district court and the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court.
The law could not be constitutionally enforced merely because the government alleged someone is a regular drug user, the appeals court found, basing its ruling on an earlier precedent.
The government instead must show that the gun owner was under the influence of the drug at the time of the arrest, the appeals court ruled.
Prosecutors did not do so in Hemani’s case.
Hemani, a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan, was already under FBI scrutiny when he was arrested, Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in court papers. The government has asserted that Hemani and his family have ties with Iranian entities hostile to the United States, although he has faced no specific charges relating to those links.
A handgun, marijuana and cocaine were found when the FBI searched his home in 2022.
Monday’s is the second gun case currently being considered by the Supreme Court. In January, the justices heard arguments over a Hawaii law that prevents people from carrying firearms onto certain private properties without permission.
The court on Monday also declined to hear a new gun rights case on whether people who commit nonviolent felonies can be prohibited from possessing firearms. The Trump administration is also defending that law.
