Docket 24-1234
United States v. Hemani
DecidedJun 18, 2026
9-0decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court strikes down federal gun ban for regular marijuana users as inconsistent with historical tradition
Impact7/10
What it does
The Court struck down the application of 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) — the federal law banning "unlawful users" of controlled substances from possessing firearms — as inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The ruling holds that the government cannot automatically strip someone of the right to possess a firearm solely because they regularly use marijuana or another controlled substance, without any showing that the person is dangerous or incapacitated. The decision is narrow: it leaves open whether the government could prosecute someone under this law with individualized proof of dangerousness, or whether bans on people who are actively intoxicated or fully addicted remain valid.
Who benefits
People who regularly use marijuana or other controlled substances but have not been shown to be dangerous, incapacitated, or a threat to themselves or others, and who possess firearms for lawful purposes such as home self-defense.
Who is affected
Federal prosecutors who previously used §922(g)(3) to charge regular drug users with illegal firearm possession without needing to prove individual dangerousness; the federal government's ability to enforce this automatic disarmament rule is curtailed.
Practical impact
Federal prosecutors can no longer charge someone under §922(g)(3) solely on the basis that the person regularly uses marijuana or another controlled substance while also possessing a firearm, without additional evidence of individual dangerousness. People who use marijuana regularly — including in the many states where it is legal under state law — and who also own firearms are no longer automatically subject to federal prosecution, up to 15 years in prison, and lifetime disarmament under this provision alone. The ruling leaves open the possibility that Congress could craft a more targeted law, or that prosecutors could bring charges under §922(g)(3) with individualized proof that a specific defendant's drug use makes them dangerous.
Majority — Gorsuch
Joined by: Roberts, Thomas, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Jackson
The majority held that under the Court's framework from Bruen and Rahimi — which requires modern firearm regulations to be consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation — the government failed to carry its burden. The Court reasoned that the government's main historical analogy, laws targeting "habitual drunkards," does not match §922(g)(3) on any of the three key measures the government itself proposed. First, historical habitual drunkard laws targeted people who were so severely impaired by alcohol that they could not manage their own affairs, not merely people who drank regularly — a far higher bar than §922(g)(3)'s automatic trigger for anyone who regularly uses any controlled substance in any amount. Second, the historical laws the government cited were aimed at promoting productivity, protecting drunkards from themselves, or guarding against moral scandals — not at disarming a category of people deemed categorically violent and dangerous, which is the purpose the government claims for §922(g)(3). Third, every historical law the government pointed to required some form of legal process — a conviction, a probate court proceeding, or a hearing before a justice of the peace — before a person lost any liberty, whereas §922(g)(3) strips the right to bear arms automatically the moment someone becomes a regular drug user, with no prior process. The majority also expressed doubt that §922(g)(3) even achieves its stated goal of disarming categorically dangerous people, noting that the law's scope is defined by the Controlled Substances Act — a statute designed around public health, not violence prevention — and that the government's own actions, including moving marijuana to a lower drug schedule and widely tolerating its use, undercut the claim that regular marijuana users are categorically dangerous.
Dissent reasoning
There was no dissent. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, concurred in the judgment — agreeing the lower court should be affirmed — but on a narrower ground: the historical analogues the government cited simply do not justify disarming someone who merely uses marijuana regularly, because those analogues only supported disarming people whose intoxicant use left them persistently and severely incapacitated, which the government made no showing of here. Justices Jackson and Sotomayor joined the majority opinion in full but wrote separately to argue that the Court's Bruen "history and tradition" test is unworkable and that a "means-end scrutiny" approach — weighing how severe a law's burden on Second Amendment rights is against how well the law serves a legitimate government interest — would be a more rational and judicially manageable framework. Justice Thomas joined the majority but wrote separately to flag a separate constitutional concern: that §922(g) as a whole may exceed Congress's power under the Commerce Clause, because merely requiring that a firearm once crossed state lines is not a sufficient connection to interstate commerce to justify a federal gun-possession ban.
Constitutional question
Does the federal law that automatically bans anyone who regularly uses an illegal drug from possessing a firearm — with no requirement to show the person is dangerous — violate the Second Amendment as applied to a person who uses marijuana a few times a week?