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WASHINGTON, June 18 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a marijuana user on Thursday by limiting the application of a federal law that bars drug users from owning guns, finding that certain prosecutions under the measure intrude on the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The justices, in a 9-0 ruling, upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss an illegal gun possession charge brought under the law at issue against Ali Hemani, an American-Pakistani dual citizen and resident of Texas who told authorities he was a regular marijuana user.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored the ruling, said the government had not “carried its conceded burden of showing its prosecution of Mr. Hemani complies with the Second Amendment.”
President Donald Trump’s administration had defended the law, though midway through the case, it softened its position on barring marijuana users from owning guns.
Gorsuch said the government’s shift “leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.” Naz Ahmad, a lawyer for Hemani, welcomed the decision.
“The court’s unanimous ruling will protect millions of Americans from draconian punishment, simply because they happen to use marijuana and own a firearm,” Ahmad said.
A 1968 federal law called the Gun Control Act makes possession of a firearm illegal for anyone who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”
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