Guns, drugs, and the Second Amendment converged at the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday in a case that could significantly weaken the Gun Control Act of 1968.
A few basics: marijuana is legal in some form in 40 states but remains illegal under federal law as a Schedule I drug. President Trump has sought to reclassify marijuana as less dangerous, yet the Justice Department defended the federal statute that makes it a crime—punishable by up to 15 years in prison—for a marijuana user to possess a firearm.
The dispute comes after the court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which requires that modern gun regulations be analogous to laws that existed at the time of the nation’s founding. At Monday’s argument, Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the justices the federal ban on firearm possession by unlawful drug users is analogous to founding-era laws that disarmed “habitual drunkards.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch pushed back, noting that several founding-era leaders regularly drank alcohol and asking whether they would have been treated as “habitual drunkards” under that rationale. He also questioned whether someone who admitted to using marijuana every other day—or who takes a single cannabis edible occasionally—should be disarmed for life.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed to the case as an example of how difficult the Bruen test is to administer. “The entire point, I thought, of the Bruen test was to say that the only thing the modern legislature gets to do is follow the judgments of the founding-era legislature” about who is dangerous and who can be disarmed, she said.
Justice Samuel Alito observed that many commonly used drugs today—heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl—did not exist at the time of the founding, and marijuana was not widely consumed until the early 20th century, raising doubts about what the framers of the Second Amendment thought about illegal drug use.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said she was “stuck,” noting a lack of evidence that the defendant’s every-other-day marijuana use made him dangerous or warranted deprivation of a legally purchased firearm. She listed other regulated substances—Robitussin (containing dextromethorphan), Ambien, codeine-containing Tylenol, testosterone, Adderall—and said none obviously suggest a risk of violence.
When the defendant’s lawyer, Erin Murphy, argued for narrowing the statute, Chief Justice John Roberts challenged her view that courts, rather than Congress and the executive, should be the primary arbiters of which drugs warrant firearm prohibitions. Roberts suggested Murphy’s approach could lead to myriad court-by-court decisions about gun bans in places like courthouses, undermining expertise and policy judgments typically left to elected branches.
Justice Elena Kagan raised a hypothetical about ayahuasca, a powerful hallucinogen whose effects can dissolve one’s grasp of reality, asking whether Congress might reasonably conclude such intoxication makes firearm possession particularly dangerous. A light moment followed when Barrett asked if the drug was real and laughter broke out in the courtroom.
The case centers on Ali Danial Hemani. Federal agents searching the home he shared with his parents found a legally purchased firearm; Hemani told FBI agents he used marijuana every other day. He was charged under the 1968 law banning unlawful users of controlled substances from possessing guns. The Fifth Circuit later tossed the charges, holding the statute violates the Second Amendment, and the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court.
A decision is expected by summer.