In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment<\/a><\/span> was violated by prosecution of the defendant, a marijuana<\/a> user, under 18 U.S. Code \u00a7 922(g)(3). This federal law prohibits unlawful users of any controlled substance from possessing, using, receiving, exporting, or selling a firearm.<\/span> Prosecution required <\/span>no<\/span><\/i> showing that a gun owner \u201cis regularly incapacitated, incapable of conducting his affairs, or a threat to himself or others.\u201d<\/span> The defendant was prosecuted for possessing a gun while being an unlawful marijuana user, after he admitted to smoking multiple times per week. The Court followed the test established in <\/span>District of Columbia v. Heller<\/span><\/i>, requiring the government to show that a federal law regulating firearms is \u201cconsistent with the Nation\u2019s historical tradition of regulation.\u201d<\/span> The Supreme Court held this showing was <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>made; thus, applied to this defendant, 922(g)(3) was unconstitutional.<\/span><\/p>\n Suspecting Ali Hemani and his family \u201cof terrorism-related activities,\u201d the FBI searched their Texas home in 2022.<\/span> Cooperative during the search, Mr. Hemani relinquished his gun and indicated the location of marijuana on his property. Consenting to an interview, he admitted using marijuana multiple times per week. Prosecution of Mr. Hemani was based \u201csolely on his admitted use of marijuana about every other day,\u201d making him an unlawful user of a controlled substance in knowing possession of a gun.<\/span><\/p>\n U.S. Code \u00a7 922(g) prohibits categories of people from gun possession, including those convicted of domestic violence or crimes punishable by over 1 year of imprisonment, and \u201cfugitives from justice.\u201d<\/span> Subsection (3) \u201cautomatically disarms anyone who regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance for anything other than its prescribed purpose.\u201d<\/span> It didn\u2019t matter which controlled substances (or in what amounts) are used, whether such use is deemed to pose a danger, nor why (or how safely) a gun is possessed.<\/span><\/p>\n To evaluate whether a law infringes upon the Second Amendment, the Court follows a test laid out in <\/span>District of Columbia v. Heller<\/span><\/i>, asking:<\/span><\/p>\n The government agreed that \u201c\u00a7 922(g)(3)\u2019s unlawful user provision burdens conduct presumptively protected by the Second Amendment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n To overcome this presumption of unconstitutionality, the government has the burden to show the law is \u201cconsistent with the Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation.\u201d<\/span> This \u201cinvolves considering whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin regulatory tradition.\u201d<\/span> This may be proven through <\/span>reasoning by analogy<\/b>, by showing the challenged law mirrors (is <\/span>relevantly similar<\/b>) to others <\/span>well-established<\/b> in U.S. history.<\/span> A law may be \u201crelevantly similar\u201d to historical ones based on its:<\/span><\/p>\n The government argued that 922(g)(3) was similar to historical laws regulating \u201c<\/span>habitual drunkards<\/b>\u201d including <\/span>vagrancy laws<\/b> allowing their confinement, <\/span>civil-commitment<\/b> statutes allowing courts to appoint guardians or authorize their commitment,<\/span> and <\/span>surety laws<\/b> allowing judicial officers to compel them to post surety bonds to ensure their good behavior.<\/span> A habitual drunkard was defined as someone who \u201cfor any considerable part of his time [was] intoxicated to such a degree as to deprive him of his ordinary reasoning faculties.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike traditional laws, 922(g)(3) did <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> require a showing that an individual is \u201cregularly incapacitated, much less incapable of conducting his affairs or a threat to himself or others.\u201d<\/span> The historical laws generally \u201cprovided some form of [judicial] process before an individual lost any of his liberties, even temporarily.\u201d In contrast, 922(g)(3) \u201cautomatically divests an individual of his constitutional right to bear arms the moment he becomes an unlawful user and until he ends his drug use, all without any pre-deprivation process.\u201d<\/span> The Court concluded: \u201cThe historical laws on which [the government\u2019s analogy] relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways.\u201d<\/span> Thus, 922(g)(3) was unconstitutional as applied to the defendant in <\/span>Hemani<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n The Court clarified that its decision does <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> prevent banning those addicted or currently intoxicated from possessing firearms. Nor banned is legislation based on specific conclusions that users of certain drugs pose a particular risk of misusing guns.<\/span> Distinguished from subsection (3), \u201cother provisions of \u00a7 922, such as subsections (g)(1) (disarming convicted felons) and (g)(4) (disarming any person \u2018adjudicated as a mental defective\u2019 or \u2018committed to a mental institution\u2019), involve some manner of pre-deprivation [judicial] process\u201d, and are <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>affected by the ruling.<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>Hemani<\/span><\/i> Court explained: \u201cForty states, three territories and the District of Columbia have legalized some marijuana use . . . Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them. All of which leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.\u201d<\/span> This statement reflects the constantly-evolving nature of both societal expectations and cultural norms, key themes surrounding constitutional interpretation.<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>Hemani <\/span><\/i>Court stated that the Second Amendment \u201ccan, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated.\u201d While not addressed in <\/span>Hemani<\/span><\/i>,<\/span> the same could be said about the Fourth Amendment, prohibiting (but <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> defining) unreasonable searches and seizures. Today\u2019s cutting-edge technology and pharmaceutical medications, often surrounding core issues in landmark court cases, were unfathomable when the Constitution was drafted.<\/span> As modern digital devices redefine expectations of privacy, courts continue clarifying search and seizure limitations, through the lens of the Founders, as applied to <\/span>effects<\/span><\/i> incomprehensible just a few decades ago.<\/span><\/p>\n This article is legal training, not legal advice. Check your state law and your agency policy, because both can be more restrictive than the Fourth Amendment.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" United States v. Hemani Federal Ban on Firearm Possession by Unlawful Users of Controlled Substances Held Unconstitutional as Applied to the Defendant Overview In June 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment was violated by prosecution of the defendant, a marijuana user, under 18 U.S. Code \u00a7 922(g)(3). This federal law prohibits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1010,"featured_media":224382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":[],"_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"wds_primary_category":112,"footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[785,775,786],"class_list":["post-209573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-4th-amendment-basics","tag-gun-rights","tag-legal-deep-dive","tag-scotus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/224382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/portal.bluetogold.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Background Leading Up to the Case<\/b><\/h2>\n
The Federal Provision at Issue: <\/b>Prohibition on Unlawful Users of Controlled Substances<\/span><\/h2>\n
Court\u2019s Analysis: Initial Questions<\/b><\/h2>\n
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The Government\u2019s Burden to Overcome the Presumption of Protection<\/b><\/h2>\n
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Court\u2019s Clarification on the Narrowness of its Decision<\/b><\/h2>\n
While the Second (Not Fourth) Amendment was at Issue in <\/b>Hemani<\/i><\/b>, the Evolving Nature of Constitutional Interpretation Remains Pervasive<\/b><\/h2>\n
References<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Related from Blue to Gold<\/h2>\n
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