Supreme Court Hears Second Amendment Challenge to Federal Gun Ban for Unlawful Drug Users

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday in United States v. Hemani, a case testing whether a 1968 Gun Control Act provision that bars unlawful drug users from possessing firearms violates the Second Amendment under the Court’s 2022 Bruen framework. The Biden–then Trump Justice Department (now represented by Solicitor General D. John Sauer) is asking the justices to uphold the law, arguing Congress may temporarily disarm 'habitual' users of illegal drugs, analogizing them to founding‑era restrictions on habitual drunkards and other 'unusually dangerous' people. Defendant Ali Hemani was charged after FBI agents found a Glock 9mm, about 60 grams of marijuana and a small amount of cocaine in his Texas home; the Fifth Circuit has already held in related cases that the statute is unconstitutional when there is no proof the defendant was intoxicated while armed. Gun‑law scholars say the Court took the case to clarify which categories of people the government can disarm consistent with 'historical tradition,' a question with implications that extend well beyond marijuana users. DOJ data show about 300 people a year are prosecuted under this provision, and the case follows high‑profile scrutiny of the same statute in Hunter Biden’s 2024 conviction, later mooted by a presidential pardon.