In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court ruled that a Texas man who uses marijuana cannot be barred from legally owning a gun under a 1968 federal law that prohibits gun possession by people who use illegal drugs.
For Ali Danial Hemani, the fight wasn’t about whether he wanted a firearm. It was about whether the government could treat his marijuana use as a reason to strip away his right to own one.
On Thursday. the Supreme Court unanimously sided with the Texas marijuana user who argued that a law barring guns from anyone who uses drugs illegally violates the Second Amendment. Hemani. the court ruled in effect through its agreement. was not charged with any other crimes and was not accused of using the weapon under the influence.
The decision lands with particular force for the Republican administration led by President Donald Trump. Federal prosecutors had defended the 1968 law even as the administration has pushed against other gun restrictions. Thursday’s ruling turned that stance into a loss. adding to a broader pattern in which the Supreme Court has repeatedly expanded gun rights in recent years.
The Court’s decision is also tied to a wider political and legal friction over what counts as a lawful limit on gun ownership. Marijuana law has shifted dramatically across the country: more than half of U.S. states have legalized cannabis broadly, and it has become widely used for health purposes. Yet recreational use remains illegal at the federal level.
That mismatch—state-level legalization and federal illegality—has now collided with Second Amendment protections in a case that, on its face, involved only a narrow question: can a person be disqualified from owning a gun solely because of illegal drug use under federal law?
The ruling marks another stop in a Supreme Court docket that has been busy with firearms cases since a landmark 2022 decision that expanded gun rights. In the months that followed. the justices have upheld a law aimed at protecting victims of domestic violence and have sustained strict regulations on ghost gun kits. They have also struck down a ban on bump stocks, an accessory that enables rapid fire.
This term alone, the justices considered two firearm cases.
The case also reflects how intertwined gun policy and drug policy have become in courtrooms. It is rare to see standalone criminal charges filed against people accused of owning guns and using drugs. More often. the gun-and-drug issues appear alongside allegations of other crimes—something that makes the Hemani case stand out for its specificity.
The political alliances behind it were unusual, too. The American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association both supported Hemani’s position. Cannabis legalization groups like NORML backed him as well. On the other side were gun safety groups like Everytown, which typically opposes the Trump administration on Second Amendment issues.
Thursday’s decision also comes in a legal atmosphere shaped by prior drug-and-gun enforcement battles. The same federal law at the center of Hemani’s case has been used in litigation involving Hunter Biden. who was convicted in Wilmington. Delaware. in 2018 for buying a gun while addicted to cocaine. Biden was later pardoned by his father, then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
The Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t change the federal fact that recreational cannabis remains illegal. But it does narrow how far the federal government can go in using illegal drug use alone as a bar to gun ownership—at least under the Second Amendment as the justices now read it.
Supreme Court Ali Danial Hemani Texas marijuana gun rights Second Amendment 1968 law Trump administration NORML ACLU NRA Everytown Hunter Biden