Justices agree to review federal law banning drug users from possessing guns
By John Fritze, CNN
(CNN) — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide if the federal government may bar certain drug users from owning guns or if the law violates the Second Amendment, taking up a second significant guns case of its current term.
The appeal represents a rare circumstance in which the Trump administration is defending a gun prohibition, which it described in briefing at the Supreme Court as a “narrow” limitation on one of “Americans’ most cherished freedoms.”
The case centers on Ali Danial Hemani, a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan, who was indicted in 2023 on a single count of violating the guns-and-drugs law after the FBI found a 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine at his family home. This prosecution, the government told the high court, rested Hemani’s habitual use of marijuana.
The court will likely hear arguments in the Hemani case next year and hand down a decision by the end of June.
A federal district court dismissed the charge, noting a landmark decision from the Supreme Court in 2022 that made it easier for Americans to carry handguns in public and also required similar gun prohibitions to have a connection to history.
But just how closely analogous prosecutors must come to a historic law has been a matter of debate. Last year, for instance, the Supreme Court upheld a federal law that bars guns for Americans who are the subject of certain domestic abuse restraining orders, rejecting an argument pressed by gun rights groups that the prohibition violated the Second Amendment.
The conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, holding in a brief decision that the historical record points only to laws that barred guns for Americans who are actively intoxicated or under the influence of drugs at the time of their arrest. The government, the court ruled, could not target habitual users.
The Trump administration appealed that decision.
“Habitual illegal drug users with firearms present unique dangers to society – especially because they pose a grave risk of armed, hostile encounters with police officers while impaired,” the Department of Justice told the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration laid out a series of allegations against Hemani in its appeal, claiming a search of his phone at the border in 2019 revealed he was prepared to commit fraud at the direction of affiliates of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The government also claimed Hemani traveled to Iran to participate in a celebration of the life of Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian official killed in a US drone strike in 2020.
In his response, Hemani argued that the historical support for the federal law is “tenuous at best.” And his attorneys noted that nearly half of US states have legalized recreational marijuana.
“While the number of Americans who use marijuana legally under state law and possess a firearm is unknown, there is certainly a significant overlap between the two,” he argued.
President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted in 2024 of the same law at issue in the Hemani case. He was later pardoned by Biden during his final days in the White House.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court also agreed to hear a case questioning whether states may bar people from carrying guns on private property – like malls and retail stores – without permission from the property owner.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
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