Supreme Court overturns gun ban for Texas man who used marijuana

A unanimous Supreme Court ruling cut back a federal gun ban for Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas man whose case put marijuana use and Second Amendment protections on a collision course. The justices said the government could not automatically disarm Hemani, even after agents found a Glock 19 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana and 4.7 grams of cocaine at his family home.

Hemani, a dual U.S.-Pakistani citizen born in Texas who grew up in the Dallas area, lived with his parents and worked a stable job. FBI agents searched the home in 2022 after he told them he used marijuana about every other day. More than six months later, federal prosecutors indicted him under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), the law that bars unlawful users of or addicts to controlled substances from possessing firearms and can bring as much as 15 years in prison for a knowing violation.

The district court in East Texas threw out the charge, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. On June 18, the Supreme Court upheld that result in United States v. Hemani, No. 24-1234, ruling that the prosecution was inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court that the government was trying to strip Hemani of his constitutional rights based only on regular drug use, without showing that the statute fit the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.

That historical-tradition test, first drawn from recent Second Amendment precedent in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen and developed further in United States v. Rahimi, was central to the case. Gorsuch said modern gun laws do not have to be exact historical twins, but they do have to rest on relevant historical principles. Here, the court said, the government did not make that showing.

The ruling narrows one of the federal government’s tools against marijuana users who own guns, especially in cases where prosecutors cannot show intoxication or dangerous conduct at the moment of possession. That matters far beyond Hemani, because millions of Americans use marijuana, often under state laws that conflict with federal restrictions on firearms.

The case drew an unusual coalition. The Trump administration defended the statute, joined by California and other liberal states, while Everytown for Gun Safety backed the government’s position. Gun-rights organizations and civil-liberties advocates lined up behind Hemani. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately, underscoring the court’s continuing skepticism of broad gun regulations tied to older federal theories of power.