A Texas man who admitted using marijuana every other day walked away from the Supreme Court with his gun rights intact after federal prosecutors’ attempt to ban him from owning firearms collapsed in a 9-0 ruling.
Federal agents raided Ali Hemani’s Dallas-area home in 2022 during an investigation that yielded no terrorism leads. What survived was Hemani’s confession: he surrendered his firearm, displayed marijuana, and acknowledged using it regularly. Texas law treats such possession as a misdemeanor, but federal prosecutors argued his single admission of routine marijuana use warranted a felony charge with up to 15 years in prison and a lifetime firearms ban.
The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the government’s argument, stating that the law barring “unlawful users” from gun ownership under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) violated the Second Amendment. In a pivotal majority opinion authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court emphasized: “No matter that the government did not assert Mr. Hemani was a drug addict. No matter that it did not contend his drug use had ever led him to pose a danger to himself or others.”
The justices’ reasoning split 7-2, rejecting federal prosecutors’ analogy to historical laws restricting guns for chronic alcoholics. The ruling explicitly shields gun rights for non-addicted individuals, people currently intoxicated, and felons while limiting the government’s power to broadly ban firearm ownership based on marijuana use alone.
The decision reaffirms a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finding that the federal statute overreaches constitutional protections under the Second Amendment.
