Supreme Court sides with Texas man who challenged law barring drug users from having guns
By Melissa Quinn
Updated on: June 18, 2026 /
Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a Texas man who challenged a federal law that bars certain drug users from having firearms.
In a unanimous decision in the case U.S. v. Hemani, the justices found that Ali Hemani's prosecution for having a firearm while he was an unlawful drug user is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Hemani allegedly was only an occasional user of marijuana when the FBI found a handgun at his Texas home in 2022.
The ruling from theSupreme Court is narrow, since the justices did not strike down the law at the center of the case in its entirety. Instead, thehigh court said the government cannot automatically disarm a person who uses marijuana a few times a week. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority opinion for the court.
The government, he wrote, "asks us to concludethat anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous without any further showing. All based on little more than its current say-so, one at odds with its own regulatory actions.And affording the government that kind of '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."
The Supreme Court's decision does not address efforts to ban drug addicts or those presently intoxicated from having firearms, Gorsuch wrote. He also said it does not impact other federal firearms restrictions, including those that disarm convicted felons, or prosecutions that involve proof that a defendant's drug use renders him dangerous.
The law at issue in the case forbids an unlawful drug user from possessing firearms, and violators face up to 15 years in prison. The Justice Department estimates roughly 300 people are charged with the offense each year.
Perhaps the most high-profile person convicted under the law was Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden's son, though he was pardoned by his father in December 2024.
The law at the center of the case was the latest to face Supreme Court scrutiny in the wake of its landmark 2022 decision that recognized the right to carry a firearm outside the home. In that decision, the high court laid out a new test for courts to apply when considering the constitution of a gun law. The framework requires the government to show that a restriction is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation.
In the wake of that ruling, the Supreme Court upheld in 2024 a federal law barring people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from having guns. The justices are also considering a challenge to a Hawaii law that prohibits people with concealed carry permits from bringing their guns onto private property open to the public without permission.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-drug-users-gun-law-us-v-hemani/