Federal agents searching respondent Ali Hemani’s family home found a firearm and marijuana. Hemani cooperated with agents and admitted that he used marijuana approximately every other day. More than six months later, relying on that admitted marijuana use, the Government charged Hemani under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), which prohibits firearm possession by an unlawful user of a controlled substance.
The district court dismissed the indictment on Second Amendment grounds, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal.
Writing for the majority, Justice Gorsuch explained that once the Second Amendment’s text covers the conduct at issue, the Government bears the burden of showing that its restriction is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. A modern law need not have an exact historical twin, but historical analogues must be sufficiently similar in both why they operated and how they burdened the right.
The Government relied primarily on historical laws concerning habitual drunkards, including vagrancy laws, civil-commitment statutes, and surety laws. The Supreme Court concluded that those laws targeted materially different conduct, served different purposes, and operated through materially different procedures. Historical laws generally targeted people whose intoxication rendered them incapacitated or unable to manage their affairs, rather than anyone who regularly consumed an intoxicant. § 922(g)(3), by contrast, automatically disarmed Hemani without individualized proof that his marijuana use made him dangerous or incapable of safely possessing a firearm.
The Supreme Court therefore held § 922(g)(3) unconstitutional as applied to Hemani. The holding is narrow, however, as the Court expressly left open laws directed at present intoxication or addiction, restrictions involving drugs shown to create a special danger, and prosecutions supported by individualized evidence that a defendant’s drug use makes firearm possession dangerous.
Justice Thomas concurred and separately questioned Congress’s Commerce Clause authority to enact § 922(g).
Justice Jackson, joined by Justice Sotomayor, concurred while reiterating her criticism of Bruen’s history-and-tradition methodology.
Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, concurred in the judgment, agreeing that the Government’s historical analogues did not support applying § 922(g)(3) to Hemani.
Certiorari to the Fifth Circuit
Opinion by Gorsuch, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson
Concurring opinion by Thomas
Concurring opinion by Jackson, joined by Sotomayor
Opinion concurring in the judgment by Alito, joined by Kagan
Click here to read the opinion.