The Supreme Court handed the Trump administration a unanimous loss Thursday, ruling that a 1968 law barring drug users from owning firearms cannot be used to prosecute a Texas marijuana user — a rare rebuke that also resurrects the ghost of Hunter Biden.
The justices sided with Ali Danial Hemani, who argued the prohibition violated his Second Amendment rights. Hemani had not been charged with any other crime and was not accused of using the weapon while under the influence.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court, stressed that the decision was a limited one.
"The Court's decision is narrow," he wrote, adding that it did not address whether Congress could ban addicts or intoxicated people from possessing firearms.
Gorsuch was blunt about the government's case. The administration's argument, he wrote, "fails under every measure it asks us to consider: The historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways," according to MS NOW.
The ruling is a striking setback for President Donald Trump's Justice Department, which had defended the decades-old statute even as the administration has fought other gun restrictions in court. The Trump administration, NBC News noted, has cast itself as a fierce Second Amendment defender, frustrating gun-rights advocates who watched it line up behind the prosecution.
The same statute drove the criminal case against Hunter Biden, who was convicted in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, of buying a Colt revolver in 2018 while addicted to crack cocaine. His father, then-President Joe Biden, pardoned him in December 2024.
About half of U.S. states have legalized marijuana broadly, though recreational use remains a federal crime. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order in April reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, adding another layer of tension to the Justice Department's defense of the gun ban.
The ACLU and the National Rifle Association both backed Hemani, joined by cannabis legalization advocates at NORML. Gun safety groups like Everytown, which typically oppose the administration on Second Amendment questions, lined up on the other side.
The opinion is the latest in a wave of firearms decisions triggered by the court's landmark 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which broadly expanded gun rights. Since then, the justices have upheld a law protecting domestic violence victims and restrictions on ghost gun kits, while striking down a federal ban on bump stocks.