The federal government cannot strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights simply because they use marijuana, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday — a decision that corrects an unconstitutional overreach that never should have needed nine justices to fix.
The case involved Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man prosecuted under a federal statute that bars any "unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" from possessing a firearm. The FBI found a handgun during a 2022 search of his home, along with marijuana and cocaine. But the government's case rested solely on his marijuana use — and that, all nine justices agreed, isn't enough to cancel a constitutional right.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the government "asks us to conclude that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous without any further showing," relying on "little more than its current say-so." That kind of blanket power to designate any group as dangerous, Gorsuch warned, would risk allowing the government to "quickly swallow" the Second Amendment.
The ruling is narrow. It doesn't strike down the law entirely, and it doesn't address whether the government can disarm drug addicts or someone actively intoxicated. Prosecutors can still bring charges — they just can't rely on drug use alone as automatic proof that someone is dangerous. William Sack, a lawyer at the Second Amendment Foundation, said future cases will require the government to provide actual evidence that a defendant's drug use makes them a danger to the public.
NBC News noted that the same law was used to convict Hunter Biden in June 2024 before his father pardoned him — a detail the Washington Post omitted entirely. CBS News reported that roughly 300 people are charged under the statute each year, each facing up to 15 years in prison and a permanent gun ban.
Here's what should trouble every American: the Trump administration defended this law in court, annoying gun rights advocates who expected better. And prosecutors tried to smear Hemani by suggesting ties to Iranian groups hostile to the U.S. — NBC News reported that detail — but never brought any such charges. The government's real argument was that smoking pot makes you automatically dangerous, a claim so weak it couldn't hold up against a single honest reading of the Constitution.
Gorsuch noted the government's position was "at odds with its own regulatory actions" — a pointed reference to the fact that 40 states have legalized marijuana to some degree, and the Trump administration itself rescheduled certain marijuana products to a lower drug classification in April. The government can't simultaneously say marijuana is benign enough to reschedule and dangerous enough to cancel your rights.
Cecillia Wang of the ACLU, which represented Hemani, said the court "sent a strong message that the government cannot criminalize the conduct of large numbers of people by making categorical and unfounded assumptions about whether they are dangerous." The Giffords Law Center's Leigh Rome stressed the ruling's narrow scope, insisting it "continues to allow the government to enact and enforce reasonable categorical prohibitions."
The Constitution is not a suggestion. The fact that it took a unanimous Supreme Court ruling to remind the federal government of that — on a question this basic — tells you how far the bureaucracy has drifted from the founding bargain.
