SCOTUSblog By Amy Howe 3/2/2026
The Supreme Court on Monday was skeptical that the indictment of a Texas man on charges that he violated a federal law prohibiting the possession of a gun by the users of illegal drugs could go forward. Ali Danial Hemani argued that the law violates the Second Amendment – which guarantees “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” – as it applies to him, and a majority of the justices appeared to agree.
In 2022, FBI agents found a pistol, marijuana, and cocaine at Hemani’s home. Hemani told the agents that he used marijuana roughly every other day.
Hemani was charged with violating a federal law that makes it a crime for anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” to have a gun. A federal trial judge threw out the charge, at Hemani’s request. U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant relied on a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which had held that the law used to indict Hemani is unconstitutional when it is used to charge someone who may have used drugs regularly, but was not shown to be under the influence of drugs when he had the gun. The court of appeals upheld that ruling, prompting the federal government to come to the Supreme Court.
Representing the federal government, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the justices that “[t]he Second Amendment does not prohibit the government from temporarily disarming habitual marijuana users while they persist in using frequently. That tailored restriction,” Harris said, “easily fits within the historical tradition of disarming categories of people who present a special danger of misuse.” And as the Supreme Court’s recent Second Amendment cases require, Harris argued, the government had provided a “historical analogue” to the modern law “that is relevantly similar [in] why and how it restricts Second Amendment rights”: early American laws providing for the imprisonment or confinement of “habitual drunkards.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch focused on what he characterized as a more basic point: whether Hemani even qualified as a “habitual user” of marijuana. Gorsuch first observed that the term “habitual drunkard” carried a very different meaning in early American history, because people generally drank alcohol more often and in greater volumes. “John Adams,” Gorsuch said, “took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day,” while “James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day.”
And if those Founding Fathers were not “habitual drunkards,” Gorsuch continued, “then what do we know about Mr. Hemani? We know he uses marijuana … about every other day.” “[W]e don’t even know the quantity of how much he uses every other day,” Gorsuch emphasized. And the federal government, Gorsuch said, “has not been able to define what a user is.”
More:
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/03/supreme-court-skeptical-of-law-banning-drug-users-from-possessing-firearms/
