The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the federal government cannot strip a person's Second Amendment rights simply because he uses marijuana, delivering a unanimous rebuke to prosecutors who charged a Texas man with a felony for keeping a handgun in his own home. The 9-0 decision in the case of Ali Hemani limits the reach of 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3), the same statute used to convict Hunter Biden on federal gun charges in 2024.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, found that the government's historical justifications for the law fell apart under scrutiny. The prosecution never alleged Hemani was addicted to marijuana, had used a firearm while intoxicated, threatened anyone, or posed any danger to himself or others. His sole offense: admitting he smoked marijuana "about every other day" while owning a gun for self-defense.
That was enough for federal prosecutors to charge him with a felony. It was not enough, the Court held, to override the Second Amendment.
The federal government leaned on old laws targeting "habitual drunkards" as its historical analogue, arguing those statutes justified a modern blanket ban on gun ownership by any unlawful drug user. Gorsuch dismantled that argument point by point.
"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 distinction matters. Historical restrictions on habitual drunkards applied to people who had lost the regular use of their reason, not to every person who had a drink. Gorsuch noted the absurdity of the government's position by offering hypotheticals: under the federal statute's logic, "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" could both be stripped of their right to bear arms.
Gorsuch also pointed to the federal government's own conduct on marijuana policy. Most states now permit some form of marijuana use, and the federal government itself has pursued efforts to move marijuana to a less restrictive drug schedule.
"Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them."
That left the government, as Gorsuch put it, "awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous." The Washington Examiner reported that the Court explicitly held the government cannot categorically strip Second Amendment rights from marijuana users without proving they are individually dangerous.
The Court was careful to define the boundaries of its decision. Gorsuch wrote that the ruling does not address whether the government can bar firearm possession by addicts, by people who are presently intoxicated, by felons, or by drug users who have been shown to be dangerous.
"We do not address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm."
Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, concurred in the judgment but not the majority opinion. Alito wrote separately to emphasize 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 ideological poles, Alito and Kagan, agreed on the result, if not the reasoning, underscores just how weak the government's case was. When the most conservative and one of the most liberal members of the bench both say the prosecution went too far, the prosecution went too far.
The law at the center of this case is the same one federal prosecutors used to charge Hunter Biden with illegally possessing a firearm while using controlled substances. A jury convicted him on that charge and two others in 2024. Newsmax reported that Hunter Biden had purchased a gun while addicted to cocaine in 2018, and that the conviction carried a potential sentence of up to 15 years in prison.
None of that matters now, at least not for Hunter Biden personally. Former President Joe Biden pardoned his son in December 2024, before leaving office, making the Supreme Court's ruling moot in his specific case. Legal and financial fallout from Hunter Biden's defense has continued to generate headlines, but the pardon shielded him from any direct consequence of Thursday's decision.
The irony is hard to miss. The Biden administration spent years arguing that marijuana users were "no different" from felons when it came to Second Amendment rights, while Joe Biden simultaneously pardoned federal offenses for simple marijuana possession in October 2022. The Washington Free Beacon documented that contradiction: the same administration pushing marijuana reform was telling courts that pot smokers deserved to lose their gun rights.
The pardon ensured Hunter Biden never had to face the legal reckoning that Ali Hemani did. Hemani had to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court to vindicate his rights. Hunter Biden's father simply signed a piece of paper.
Gun rights organizations wasted no time celebrating. John Commerford, executive director of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, told Fox News Digital that the ruling was a landmark win for millions of Americans.
"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."
Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, placed the ruling in historical context, and did so with a sharp eye for the Founders themselves. She noted that the historical "habitual drunkard" standard targeted people who had lost the use of their reason, not casual drinkers.
"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.'"
Tyler Yzaguirre, president of the Second Amendment Institute, emphasized the unanimity of the ruling and what it means for future gun cases.
"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."
Gun control advocates will likely frame Thursday's decision as an open door for armed drug users. Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, pushed back on that narrative in a statement to 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 is the heart of the ruling. The Court did not say drug users are immune from firearms regulation. It said the government must do more than point to someone's status as a casual marijuana user and declare him a felon. It must show that the person is actually dangerous, addicted, intoxicated while armed, or a threat to others.
Gorsuch warned of the alternative. Affording 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 warning should resonate far beyond marijuana policy. If the government can strip constitutional rights from millions of people based on a status offense, no violence, no threat, no victim, then the Bill of Rights becomes a permission slip, revocable at the discretion of federal prosecutors.
During oral arguments earlier this year, Gorsuch pressed the government's attorney with a pointed hypothetical, as the New York Post reported: "What if he took one gummy bear with a medical prescription in Colorado? Let's say he had one to help him sleep every other day. Disarm him for life?" The government had no good answer then. It has no good answer now.
Ali Hemani is not a sympathetic character by design. He is a man who smoked marijuana and kept a handgun. The government treated that combination as a felony. Nine justices, appointed by presidents of both parties, said that was wrong.
The case is a reminder that constitutional rights do not depend on whether the person exercising them is popular. They depend on whether the government can justify taking those rights away. Here, the government could not. It offered historical analogies that did not fit, a legal theory that would have swept in millions of law-abiding citizens, and a policy position that contradicted its own marijuana reform agenda.
The same law was used to convict Hunter Biden, who never had to test his rights in court because his father pardoned him first. Hemani had no such luxury. He fought his case to the highest court in the land, and every justice agreed the government overreached.
When the powerful get pardons and the ordinary get felony charges, it's worth asking whose rights the system is actually designed to protect.