The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday limited the application of a decades-old federal law that bars firearms possession by certain drug users, rejecting a position taken by President Donald Trump’s administration that had threatened the gun rights of millions of Americans who use marijuana and own firearms.
The justices, in a 9-0 ruling, upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss an illegal gun possession charge brought under the law at issue against Ali Hemani, an American-Pakistani dual citizen and Texas resident who told authorities he was a regular marijuana user.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored the ruling, wrote that the government had failed to show that its prosecution of Hemani complied with the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The Trump administration had defended the law, though midway through the case it softened its position on barring marijuana users from owning guns. Gorsuch said the government’s shift “leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.”
A 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act made possession of a firearm illegal for anyone who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”
Thursday’s ruling stopped short of precisely defining the bounds of that legal provision, including which types of drugs, if any, pose a special risk of misuse of guns. But the court, which often has taken an expansive view of Second Amendment protections, said the government’s failure to even allege that Hemani was an addict or show that his marijuana use made him a danger to himself or others all but doomed its case.
Naz Ahmad, a lawyer for Hemani, welcomed the decision.
“The court’s unanimous ruling will protect millions of Americans from draconian punishment, simply because they happen to use marijuana and own a firearm,” Ahmad said.
