U.S. Supreme Court sides with a Texas man who says it’s not a crime for marijuana users to have guns

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thurs­day against a broad fed­er­al ban on gun own­er­ship by mar­i­jua­na users, the lat­est in a line of firearm cas­es from a court that has ex­pand­ed gun rights.

The jus­tices de­cid­ed unan­i­mous­ly in favour of Ali Da­nial He­mani, a Texas man who ar­gued that a law bar­ring guns from any­one who reg­u­lar­ly us­es il­le­gal drugs vi­o­lates the Sec­ond Amend­ment.

Jus­tice Neil Gor­such wrote that his opin­ion nar­row­ly lim­its the gov­ern­ment’s pow­er to take guns away from drug users who are not con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous. He­mani, who was not charged with any oth­er crimes or ac­cused of us­ing the weapon un­der the in­flu­ence, is thank­ful he “fi­nal­ly has clo­sure,” lawyer Zachary New­land said.

The de­ci­sion is a loss for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion, which had de­fend­ed the 1968 law de­spite ar­gu­ing against oth­er gun re­stric­tions. Its core ar­gu­ment “fails un­der every mea­sure,” Gor­such wrote.

The law was orig­i­nal­ly meant to keep guns away from dan­ger­ous peo­ple, but mil­lions of peo­ple now use mar­i­jua­na, Gor­such wrote. It is broad­ly le­gal in about half the states and has gained wide­spread use for health pur­pos­es.

“What­ev­er one thinks of these de­vel­op­ments, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has not just tol­er­at­ed them; it helped fu­el them,” Gor­such wrote. “All of which leaves it awk­ward­ly po­si­tioned to sug­gest that the mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who now reg­u­lar­ly use mar­i­jua­na are cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly and un­usu­al­ly dan­ger­ous.”

The law was al­so used in a case against Hunter Biden, who was con­vict­ed in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware, of buy­ing a gun while ad­dict­ed to co­caine in 2018. He was lat­er par­doned by his fa­ther, De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

Some­one ad­dict­ed to an il­le­gal drug could po­ten­tial­ly still be pros­e­cut­ed af­ter Thurs­day’s de­ci­sion.

“We do not ad­dress ef­forts to ban ad­dicts, or those present­ly in­tox­i­cat­ed, from pos­sess­ing a firearm,” Gor­such wrote. Pros­e­cu­tors could charge a mar­i­jua­na user if they had ev­i­dence the per­son was dan­ger­ous, he said.

Recre­ation­al use re­mains il­le­gal on a fed­er­al lev­el even af­ter the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion re­clas­si­fied med­ical mar­i­jua­na as a less-dan­ger­ous drug in April.

The case made for some un­usu­al po­lit­i­cal al­liances.

The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union and the Na­tion­al Ri­fle As­so­ci­a­tion sup­port­ed He­mani’s case, as did cannabis le­gal­iza­tion groups such as NORML. On the oth­er side were gun safe­ty groups in­clud­ing Every­town that usu­al­ly op­pose the ad­min­is­tra­tion on Sec­ond Amend­ment is­sues.

The ACLU ap­plaud­ed the rul­ing, say­ing that near­ly half of Amer­i­cans have re­port­ed us­ing mar­i­jua­na at some point in their lives.

“The court has sent a strong mes­sage that the gov­ern­ment can­not crim­i­nal­ize the con­duct of large num­bers of peo­ple by mak­ing cat­e­gor­i­cal and un­found­ed as­sump­tions about whether they are dan­ger­ous,” said Ce­cil­lia Wang, le­gal di­rec­tor at the ACLU.

The Sec­ond Amend­ment Foun­da­tion called it a “ma­jor vic­to­ry for gun own­ers.”

The group Smart Ap­proach­es to Mar­i­jua­na, which op­pos­es le­gal­iza­tion of the drug, con­demned the court’s de­ci­sion.

“While the jus­tices in this case ap­pear to be most con­cerned with his­tor­i­cal bat­tles over Sec­ond Amend­ment rights, pub­lic health and safe­ty are the col­lat­er­al dam­age in this de­ci­sion,” said CEO Kevin Sa­bet.

Gun con­trol groups were more mut­ed, with Every­town say­ing that the de­ci­sion still rec­og­nizes that “drugs and guns can make for a dan­ger­ous mix.”

It is rare to see stand­alone crim­i­nal charges filed against peo­ple ac­cused sole­ly of own­ing guns and us­ing drugs. The charge is more of­ten filed against peo­ple al­so ac­cused of oth­er crimes.

The opin­ion is the lat­est in a se­ries of firearm cas­es to reach the Supreme Court since its land­mark rul­ing ex­pand­ing gun rights in 2022 led to a wave of chal­lenges around the coun­try.

Since then, the high court has up­held a law aimed at pro­tect­ing vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and strict reg­u­la­tions on ghost gun kits but has struck down a ban on bump stocks, an ac­ces­so­ry that en­ables rapid fire. The jus­tices are al­so con­sid­er­ing a sec­ond firearm case this term over strict reg­u­la­tions on car­ry­ing guns in Hawaii. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by LIND­SAY WHITE­HURST | As­so­ci­at­ed Press