Ketanji Brown Jackson was part of the June 18 Supreme Court decision that narrowed the federal ban on gun possession by people who use illegal drugs. The court said the government must show that a person’s drug use poses a risk of dangerous behavior. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the unanimous 19-page opinion in United States v. Hemani.
Ali Danial Hemani, the defendant, brought the case from Texas. The ruling leaves prosecutors with a tighter test in federal gun cases and could affect more than 10,000 denied gun transactions in 2024 under the ban.
United States v. Hemani
Gorsuch said the government’s reading of the law “asks us to conclude that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous” and gives “broad power to designate any group as dangerous and thereby disqualify its members from having a gun.” He also wrote that such a reading would “quickly swallow” the rule itself. In many respects, he added, “this case is a narrow one,” even though the court’s ruling changes how the statute can be used.
The federal law has barred unlawful users of or addicted to controlled substances from possessing firearms for more than 50 years. It applies to marijuana, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and certain prescription medications used unlawfully. The court held that the law was unconstitutional when applied to an occasional marijuana user, and the decision could reshape federal prosecutions under the drug-user ban.
Neil Gorsuch
Andrew Willinger, a law professor at Georgia State University, is among the named commentators tied to the case. The practical question now is evidence: prosecutors may need to show that a person’s drug use makes them dangerous, that the person is addicted to a drug, or that the person was actively intoxicated while using a gun. That is the standard courts will have to sort through as cases move forward under the narrowed law.
The ruling may also limit states’ ability to enforce similar restrictions in practice, especially where state rules track the same dangerousness theory. For people affected by the federal ban, the immediate change is that a drug-user disqualification is no longer automatic; the government now has to tie the person’s drug use to dangerous behavior before the ban can reach a gun case.
