Docket 24-1234
United States v. Hemani
DecidedJun 18, 2026
9-0unanimous decision
Source: CourtListener.
Court Says Prosecuting a Regular Marijuana User for Gun Possession Violates the Second Amendment
What it does
The Court holds that the government's prosecution of a regular marijuana user for gun possession under §922(g)(3) is inconsistent with the Second Amendment because the government failed to show the law is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. It affirms dismissal of the indictment but leaves open whether other applications of the statute—such as those targeting drug addicts, currently intoxicated persons, or backed by individualized proof of dangerousness—could still be constitutional.
Who benefits
Regular but non-addicted users of legal or illegal substances (such as marijuana, prescription sleep aids, or study drugs used without a prescription) who face automatic firearm bans without any showing they are dangerous or incapacitated.
Who is affected
Federal prosecutors seeking to bring §922(g)(3) cases based solely on admitted regular drug use, who must now show more—such as incapacitation, dangerousness, or individualized risk—to sustain such prosecutions.
Practical impact
Federal prosecutors can no longer automatically prosecute someone under §922(g)(3) based solely on an admission of regular drug use like marijuana, without showing dangerousness, incapacitation, or an individualized risk. Prosecutions may still proceed against drug addicts, those in a state of intoxication while possessing a firearm, or cases supported by specific evidence of danger, but many past and pending cases resting solely on regular-use admissions are now vulnerable to challenge. The ruling does not affect felon-in-possession bans or laws addressing individuals adjudicated as mentally ill.
Majority reasoning
Justice Gorsuch, writing for the Court, applied the framework from Bruen and Rahimi: once conduct falls within the Second Amendment's text, the government must show its regulation is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation, examining the "why" and "how" of historical analogues. The government's own construction of §922(g)(3) automatically bans anyone who regularly uses any controlled substance in any amount, without regard to danger, and it analogized this to historical "habitual drunkard" laws (vagrancy, civil-commitment, and surety statutes). The Court found the analogy failed on every metric: historical habitual drunkard laws targeted people whose drinking left them practically incapacitated, not mere regular users; those laws aimed to protect drunkards and their families or communal morals, not primarily to disarm dangerous people; and they provided pre-deprivation process (convictions, court proceedings, bond hearings) that §922(g)(3) lacks, since it disarms people automatically and immediately. The Court also doubted that §922(g)(3) even serves its claimed purpose of targeting categorically dangerous people, since it borrows its scope from the Controlled Substances Act's schedules, which are organized around health and abuse-potential concerns unrelated to violence, and because the government's own recent actions—curtailing marijuana enforcement, rescheduling marijuana, and widespread state legalization—undercut the claim that regular marijuana users are categorically dangerous. The Court emphasized its holding is narrow, not addressing addicts, currently intoxicated persons, felon-in-possession laws, or prosecutions backed by individualized dangerousness proof.
Constitutional question
Does prosecuting someone under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3), which bans "unlawful users" of controlled substances from possessing firearms, violate the Second Amendment when the only basis is regular marijuana use with no showing of dangerousness?