United States v. Hemani

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Questions

1. Does a federal law that prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” violate the respondent’s Second Amendment right to bear arms?

Conclusions

1. The Second Amendment bars the federal government from automatically stripping firearm rights from a person solely because they regularly use marijuana or another controlled substance, without any individualized showing that the person is incapacitated, dangerous, or poses a risk of violence. Justice Gorsuch authored the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan concurred in the judgment only.

   Under the Bruen framework, gun possession is presumptively protected, and the government must justify any restriction by showing it fits within America's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Because 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) bans an entire category of people from possessing any firearm for any reason, the government bears the burden of identifying a sufficiently similar historical law. The government pointed to early American laws targeting "habitual drunkards" — including vagrancy laws that jailed them, civil-commitment statutes that assigned them guardians or confined them to asylums, and surety laws that required them to post bonds guaranteeing good behavior. The government argued those laws mirror §922(g)(3) because both target people who regularly use intoxicants, both aim to protect the public from dangerous individuals, and both effectively disarm their targets.

   That analogy fails on every relevant dimension. On the question of who was targeted: historical habitual drunkard laws applied only to people whose drinking left them practically incapacitated and incapable of managing their own affairs — not merely frequent drinkers. §922(g)(3), as the government construes it, disarms anyone who regularly uses any controlled substance in any amount, with no incapacitation requirement. On the question of purpose: the historical laws the government cited aimed at suppressing idleness, protecting drunkards from financial ruin, and preventing moral scandals — not protecting the public from categorically violent people, which is the rationale the government now claims for §922(g)(3). On the question of how the laws operated: every one of the historical analogues required some legal proceeding before a person lost their liberty, whether a criminal conviction, a probate court hearing, or a justice-of-the-peace determination. Section 922(g)(3) strips gun rights automatically, the moment a person qualifies as an unlawful user, with no process at all. Additionally, the government's own conduct — directing federal prosecutors to curtail marijuana enforcement, permitting a multi-billion dollar marijuana industry to flourish under state law, and rescheduling marijuana from the most to a less restrictive federal drug schedule — fatally undermines its claim that all regular drug users are categorically and unusually dangerous people.

   Justice Thomas concurred, arguing that §922(g) likely exceeds Congress's power under the Commerce Clause because regulating firearm possession solely on the basis that a gun once crossed state lines is not a regulation of interstate commerce.

   Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, concurred, arguing that Bruen's history-and-tradition framework is unworkable and that courts should return to "means-end scrutiny" — directly weighing the government's interest against the burden a law places on Second Amendment rights.

   Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, concurred in the judgment only, arguing the case should rest on the single, narrow ground that the government's historical analogues targeted only the truly incapacitated, not regular users, without reaching the majority's additional analysis of purpose mismatches, procedural differences, or the government's own regulatory choices.