The Supreme Court appeared ready Monday to limit the federal government’s ability to ban drug users from possessing firearms.
During oral arguments, a majority of the justices criticized the government’s prosecution of Ali Danial Hemani, who was found with a gun and admitted using marijuana. He was charged under a law prohibiting anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from owning a firearm.
The Trump administration had asked the justices to overturn a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that found the law infringed on Second Amendment rights.
Although the government tried to defend the law by saying prosecutors target dangerous people, most justices questioned the sweeping power the law gives the government to disarm all users of controlled drugs.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett and other justices noted that the law would apply to swaths of regulated drugs without determining that using those drugs causes people to become dangerous.
Barrett pointed out that a person could be prosecuted for possessing a firearm after using a spouse’s Ambien prescription.
“The Gun Control Act just wasn’t about dangerousness. It wasn’t something that the legislature thought it needed to consider then,” Barrett said of the law first passed in 1968.
The case is the latest in a series taken by the Supreme Court since the justices expanded gun rights in a 2022 case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which held that gun restrictions had to have historical examples to pass muster under the Second Amendment.
The Trump administration has defended the statute by comparing it to laws allowing the disarmament of “habitual drunkards” in the founding era.
Deputy Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris said Monday the federal government’s broad categories of prohibited drugs should be a close enough analogue to founding-era laws meant to cover people so regularly inebriated they could not function in society.
“The controlled substances scheduling scheme does consider the long-term effects of use,” Harris said. “I think that is important because it does reflect a determination that, especially if you are regularly and routinely using these illegal drugs, there are serious side effects.”
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch questioned the government’s position that any use of a controlled substance would fall under the law, pointing out that founding leaders such as Thomas Jefferson regularly consumed what modern audiences might think of as large amounts of alcohol.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that the government had not specifically argued that officials consider a drug’s dangerousness when combined with guns when listing it as a controlled substance.
“I think the government gave this away when it said that there was no determination by the legislature on the dangerousness of the drug with guns in terms of listing it on the schedules. So doesn’t that give away the whole game?” Sotomayor said.
Harris urged the justices not to issue a broad decision overturning the law, calling it a “cornerstone of violence prevention” under federal law.
Experts said a ruling in the case could have implications for Congress’ power to ban guns for broad categories of people, including felons, fugitives, undocumented immigrants and others.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. even questioned an argument from Hemani’s attorney that prosecutors using the law should have to prove that a particular defendant is dangerous, or that a particular drug makes its users so dangerous they cannot be allowed to own weapons.
Roberts said that approach would have judges evaluating the dangerousness presented by the users of individual drugs, rather than letting the elected branches of government decide which drugs are included.
“It just seems to me that takes a fairly cavalier approach to the necessary consideration of expertise, and the judgments we leave to Congress and the executive branch,” Roberts said.
The justices are expected to issue a decision in the case by the conclusion of the term at the end of June.
The case is United States v. Ali Danial Hemani.
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