{"id":214,"date":"2026-06-18T16:11:29","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T16:11:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=214"},"modified":"2026-06-18T16:11:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T16:11:29","slug":"court-sides-with-challenger-to-law-banning-drug-users-from-possessing-guns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=214","title":{"rendered":"Court sides with challenger to law banning drug users from possessing guns"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in <em>United States v. Hemani<\/em> that the federal government cannot prosecute a Texas man on charges that he violated a federal law barring users of illegal drugs from having a gun. In , the justices agreed with Ali Danial Hemani that, at least as when it is applied to him, the law violates the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=212\">Court rules defendants may under certain circumstances appeal a sentencing condition despite an appellate waiver<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Writing for the court, Gorsuch emphasized that the government was seeking to \u201cautomatically strip Mr. Hemani of his Second Amendment right to possess a firearm\u201d and \u201cimprison him for up to 15 years\u201d based only on a showing that he \u201cregularly uses any amount of any controlled substance.\u201d But the government\u2019s arguments fell short, Gorsuch concluded, because the early American laws on which the government relied to support these restrictions \u201ctargeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The case began in 2022, when FBI agents searched Hemani\u2019s home and found a Glock 19 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine. Hemani said that he used marijuana approximately every other day.<\/p>\n<p>Based on his admission that he used marijuana, Hemani was indicted on charges that he had violated\u00a0a federal law\u00a0that makes it a crime for anyone who is \u201can unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance\u201d to have a gun. A knowing violation of the law is a felony, which can carry a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Hemani asked the federal trial judge to throw out the charge against him. He contended that at least as applied to him, the law violated the Second Amendment, which protects \u201cthe right of the people to keep and bear Arms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant granted that request, pointing to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit holding that the law is unconstitutional when it is used to charge someone who may have been a habitual drug user but was not shown to be under the influence of drugs when he had the gun.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=211\">Opinions on their way<\/a><\/p>\n<p>On appeal, the federal government agreed with Hemani that, based on the 5th Circuit\u2019s ruling, the dismissal of the charge against Hemani should stand. In\u00a0a brief, unsigned opinion, the court of appeals upheld Mazzant\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n<p>The federal government then asked the justices to weigh in, which they agreed to do in October. On Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the 5th Circuit\u2019s decision.<\/p>\n<p>Although all of the justices agreed that Hemani\u2019s conviction was improper, several justices wrote separate opinions. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion in which he argued that the law under which Hemani had been convicted violates the Constitution, because Congress does not have the power \u201cto regulate the possession of firearms solely on the ground that they crossed state lines at some point in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in which she contended that the framework established by the Supreme Court in its 2022 decision in <em>New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/em>, holding that courts should uphold restrictions on gun rights only when there is a tradition of such regulations in early U.S. history, \u201cis unworkable\u201d and \u201cvulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application, as judges draw different conclusions from the same historical evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Justice Samuel Alito, in an opinion joined by Justice Elena Kagan, agreed with the result that the majority reached, if not its reasoning. In his view, the federal government had \u201cfailed to show that a marijuana user like\u201d Hemani \u201cis incapacitated in a way analogous to the habitual drunkards that the Government\u2019s analogues regulated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=209\">Announcement of opinions for Thursday, June 18<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in United States v. Hemani that the federal government cannot prosecute a Texas man on charges that he violated a federal law barring users of illegal drugs from having a gun. In , the justices agreed with Ali Danial Hemani that, at least as when it is applied to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion-analysis"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Court sides with challenger to law banning drug users from possessing guns - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=214\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court sides with challenger to law banning drug users from possessing guns - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in United States v. 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