The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a case that could reshape how far the federal government can reach into Americans' homes to strip them of their firearms. The question before the justices: can the government make it a crime for unlawful drug users to possess a gun?
The case centers on a 1968 federal statute that bars anyone "who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" from possessing a firearm. The defendant is Ali Hemani, a 28-year-old Texas resident who admitted to using marijuana several times a week. Federal agents searched his home and found 60 grams of marijuana and a Glock 9mm pistol, The Hill reported.
And now the highest court in the land must decide whether that's enough to make someone a criminal.
What makes this case unusual is who's lining up on which side. The Trump administration is defending the statute's constitutionality. Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris will argue for the government, making the case that the ban is analogous to founding-era laws restricting habitual drunkards from firearms access.
The Justice Department put the historical argument plainly in court filings:
"For centuries, similar concerns have prompted restrictions on habitual drunkards through vagrancy, civil-commitment, and surety laws. The rise of illegal drugs similarly spurred laws temporarily disarming habitual drug users."
On the other side: the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America, and the American Civil Liberties Union, all urging the justices to strike down the provision. Hemani's legal team includes Clement & Murphy, a firm formed by high-profile conservative attorneys Paul Clement and Erin Murphy after their previous employer declined to take on new gun rights cases.
When the NRA and the ACLU file briefs pointing in the same direction, the statute in question deserves serious scrutiny.
Hemani's lawyers drove at the core constitutional weakness of the law. Their argument targets not just the Second Amendment question but the statute's extraordinary breadth:
"The government's own proffered analogues confirm that there is no historical tradition in this Nation of stripping anyone who consumes an intoxicant a few times a week of the right to keep a firearm in the home for self-defense."
Hemani argues the statute is too vague and could cover millions of Americans. That's not hyperbole. Consider the landscape. Marijuana remains a controlled substance under federal law, even as dozens of states have legalized it for recreational or medical use. The federal statute doesn't require a conviction. It doesn't require addiction. It covers anyone who is an "unlawful user." A weekend marijuana consumer in a state where it's legal at the state level is still, under federal law, an unlawful user of a controlled substance.
That means the federal government has, on paper, the authority to disarm a staggering number of otherwise law-abiding citizens who have never been convicted of a violent crime, never threatened anyone, and may be acting entirely within the bounds of their state's laws.
Conservatives should sit with that for a moment.
This case arrives in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2022 decision that expanded Second Amendment rights by ruling that firearms laws must be consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation in America. That decision changed the playing field. It's no longer enough for the government to assert a compelling interest. The government must show that a restriction fits within the nation's historical tradition of arms regulation.
The administration argues the habitual drunkard analogy does exactly that. Hemani's team says it doesn't come close.
In 2024, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the federal gun possession ban for people with domestic violence restraining orders could still stand, suggesting the justices are willing to uphold some categorical restrictions under the historical framework. But domestic violence restraining orders involve judicial findings of specific danger to identified individuals. Being an "unlawful user" of marijuana involves no such finding. No judge has assessed any threat. No victim has sought protection.
The administration has also raised national security concerns specific to Hemani. According to the government, Hemani and his family traveled to Iran in 2020 after U.S. forces killed Qasem Soleimani at President Trump's direction during his first term. The administration says Hemani had sympathies with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and has made statements about reporting an "imminent terrorist attack." Hemani's mother was allegedly seen on video praying her sons would become martyrs.
These are serious allegations. But they cut in a complicated direction for the government's legal argument. If the concern is that a specific individual poses a terrorism-related threat, the answer is terrorism-related charges and judicial process, not a sweeping statute that criminalizes gun ownership for anyone who uses a controlled substance a few times a week. Using the scariest possible defendant to defend the broadest possible statute is a familiar prosecutorial move. The justices should see through it.
It's impossible to discuss this statute without noting its most famous recent target. Defendants convicted under this very provision include Hunter Biden, who argued it violated his Second Amendment rights, until his father pardoned him on the charge.
The irony is layered. The same political class that spent years insisting the Second Amendment protects only militias suddenly discovered individual gun rights when the president's son needed them. And the same pardon power that Democrats once warned would be abused was deployed to make the whole thing disappear.
None of that changes the legal question before the court. But it does illustrate how selectively the establishment treats constitutional rights. They're sacred when convenient. They're obstacles when not.
The principled conservative position here requires honesty about competing values. Law and order matters. Keeping guns away from genuinely dangerous people matters. But the Second Amendment doesn't come with an asterisk that says "unless Congress decides a category of people is undesirable."
The 1968 statute was enacted as part of gun control measures passed following a surge of political assassinations, including those of former President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. That historical context explains the political moment. It does not establish constitutional authority.
If the government can strip firearms rights from anyone it defines as an "unlawful user" of a controlled substance, without a conviction, without a judicial finding of dangerousness, without any process beyond the bare statutory label, then the Second Amendment's protections are only as strong as Congress's willingness to leave them alone. That's not a right. That's a permission slip.
The NRA, Gun Owners of America, and a team of elite conservative litigators are telling the court this statute goes too far. The justices should listen.