The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday that the federal government violated the Second Amendment when it prosecuted a Texas man for keeping a handgun in his home while he used marijuana. The 9-0 decision strikes at the heart of a 1968 federal statute, the same law once used to convict Hunter Biden, and marks the latest expansion of gun rights from a court that has steadily widened Second Amendment protections since its landmark 2022 ruling.
Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in the case of Ali Danial Hemani, a Texas resident who admitted to smoking marijuana "about every other day." FBI agents found a handgun during a raid on Hemani's home and charged him with a felony under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3), the federal statute that bars any "unlawful user" of a controlled substance from possessing a firearm. The charge carries up to 15 years in prison.
Prosecutors never alleged Hemani was addicted to marijuana. They never claimed he used his firearm while intoxicated, threatened anyone, or posed a danger to himself or others. The government's entire case rested on a single fact: Hemani admitted he was a regular marijuana user.
The federal government tried to justify the law by pointing to historical statutes that restricted firearm possession by "habitual drunkards." Gorsuch dismantled that analogy in plain terms, as Fox News Digital reported:
"The government's analogy fails under every measure it asks us to consider. The historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways."
The old "habitual drunkard" laws applied to people who had lost the regular use of their faculties, not to anyone who simply drank. The modern federal statute, by contrast, sweeps in every person who uses any controlled substance unlawfully, regardless of frequency, context, or impairment. Gorsuch noted the ban could extend to "a college student who routinely uses a friend's Adderall to cram for exams" or "a husband who regularly takes his wife's prescription Ambien to sleep."
That breadth was the statute's undoing. The court found the government could not square a blanket ban on millions of Americans with the narrow historical precedents it cited. And Gorsuch pointed out an awkward reality for federal prosecutors: the government itself has been relaxing marijuana enforcement for years.
"Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them."
Most states now permit some form of marijuana use. The federal government has worked to move marijuana to a less restrictive drug schedule. Yet prosecutors wanted the court to accept that every regular marijuana user in America is too dangerous to own a firearm. The justices were not persuaded.
The decision is carefully limited. Gorsuch stressed that the court was not opening the door to unrestricted gun ownership by drug users across the board.
"We do not address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm."
The ruling leaves the government free to prosecute people who possess firearms while actively intoxicated, who are genuinely addicted, or who can be shown to pose a danger. It does not disturb laws barring felons from owning guns. It applies specifically to Hemani's circumstances: a man who used marijuana regularly but was never accused of any violent or threatening conduct.
This term has produced a striking number of unanimous or near-unanimous outcomes from the court, a trend worth watching as the justices race to finish a heavy docket before the term ends.
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, concurred in the judgment but wrote separately. Alito's opinion zeroed in on the gap between the government's historical evidence and its legal theory:
"The mismatch between the Government's historical analogues and the theory on which the Government defends the constitutionality of §922(g)(3) as applied to respondent is clear."
That two justices from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, Alito and Kagan, joined the same concurrence underscores how weak the government's position was. The case also drew unusual political alliances, with both the ACLU and the NRA filing briefs in support of Hemani, alongside cannabis legalization groups.
Gorsuch's opinion contains a warning that reaches well beyond marijuana. He wrote that giving the government "broad power to designate any group as dangerous and thereby disqualify its members from having a gun" would risk allowing it to "quickly swallow" the Second Amendment. That language puts future administrations on notice: the court will not rubber-stamp categorical disarmament based on status alone.
The ruling reinforces a principle that has been building since the court's 2022 decision: firearm restrictions must be grounded in the nation's historical tradition of gun regulation, not in modern political preferences.
Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, put the historical test in colorful terms. She noted that Founding Fathers themselves were hardly teetotalers:
"It's a good day for the Second Amendment when all nine justices can agree to protect gun rights. The mere fact of illegal drug use, without more, isn't enough to justify prosecution for gun ownership. Historically, 'habitual drunkards' who habitually lost use of their reason could have their rights restricted, but not just regular drinkers, even including Founding Fathers like John Adams, who drank 'a tankard of hard cider' with breakfast, or James Madison, who 'consumed a pint of whisky daily.' Hemani, who used marijuana a few times a week, doesn't fit the historical mold of a 'habitual drunkard' whose rights can be limited on those grounds alone."
The same statute at the center of this case, §922(g)(3), was used to convict Hunter Biden on federal gun charges. Biden was pardoned in December 2024, so Thursday's ruling has no direct effect on his case. But the decision does weaken the legal foundation that prosecutors used to secure that conviction.
The court stopped short of striking down §922(g)(3) entirely. The statute remains on the books, and prosecutors can still bring cases against drug users who meet a higher threshold, addiction, intoxication while armed, or demonstrated dangerousness. What they can no longer do is charge someone with a felony simply because he admitted to using marijuana and owned a gun.
The court's recent pattern of unanimous rulings suggests the justices are finding more common ground than the public might expect on questions of government overreach.
John Commerford, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, told Fox News Digital the ruling validated what the organization argued in its amicus brief:
"The Court rejected the government's attempt to bar millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms based solely on their status as occasional marijuana users. As the NRA argued in its amicus brief, there is no historical justification for disarming people for engaging in nonviolent conduct."
Tyler Yzaguirre, president of the Second Amendment Institute, emphasized the unanimity of the outcome despite differences in reasoning:
"While the justices offered different legal reasoning, they unanimously agreed that applying this federal gun ban to Hemani violated the Second Amendment. This ruling reinforces the principle that firearm restrictions must be consistent with our nation's historical tradition of gun regulation, not modern political preferences."
Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, anticipated the predictable reaction from gun control advocates. She told Fox News Digital:
"Gun control activists will inevitably claim that the sky is falling. It isn't. The ruling still leaves the government room to disarm addicts or prosecute people who possess firearms while actively intoxicated."
That distinction matters. The ruling does not create a free-for-all. It draws a line between people who use a substance and people who are impaired or dangerous, a distinction the federal statute, as written, failed to make.
The case also represents a defeat for the Trump administration, which had defended the law in court. But the loss is a narrow one, and the administration retains broad authority to prosecute gun crimes involving genuine danger or addiction.
The federal government charged Ali Hemani with a felony for keeping a handgun in his own home. It never accused him of hurting anyone, threatening anyone, or being impaired while armed. Its entire theory rested on the idea that a man who smokes marijuana every other day forfeits his constitutional right to self-defense, even as the same federal government has spent years easing marijuana restrictions and encouraging states to do the same.
All nine justices saw through it. That kind of constitutional clarity from the full bench is worth noting in a city that rarely agrees on anything.
When the government wants the power to strip a constitutional right from millions of law-abiding citizens, it had better bring more than a bad analogy and its own contradictions. Thursday, the court said so, without a single dissent.
