Supreme Court Will Consider Overturning Federal Ban On Drug Users Owning Guns
by Alison Durkee · ForbesTopline
The Supreme Court will decide whether people addicted to “controlled substances” can own firearms, as justices announced Monday they will consider whether federal rules that prohibit drug users from owning guns violate the Second Amendment.
Key Facts
The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear oral arguments in U.S. v. Ali Danial Hemeni, which asks the court to determine whether the federal statute restricting firearm use for drug users violates the Second Amendment.
Hemeni, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen who is accused of using and dealing drugs, was indicted after the FBI searched his home and found firearms, but federal judges then sided with Hemeni when he argued the charges violated the Second Amendment.
Federal law prohibits people from possessing firearms if they’re “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”
The Trump administration—despite broadly supporting gun rights—argued to the Supreme Court that the court ruling in Hemeni’s favor should be overturned, writing the law barring drug users from owning guns is a “narrow circumstance” in which the Second Amendment can be restricted.
The law only “imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction” on people because they can own firearms again once they’ve recovered from a drug addiction, the government argued, also claiming the restrictions are in line with past historical rules that put restrictions on “habitual drunkards.”
Hemeni argued the Supreme Court shouldn’t take up the case, claiming an appeals court ruling in his favor was narrowly tailored to his own specific case and didn’t invalidate the law entirely.
What To Watch For
The Supreme Court hasn’t given any indication yet when it will hear oral arguments in the case, but the case will be heard and a ruling will be issued sometime before the court’s term ends in late June 2026.
Surprising Fact
Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, was charged and ultimately convicted under the statute that bars drug users from owning firearms, after Biden possessed a firearm for 11 days while addicted to drugs. The charge was one of three counts that a jury found Biden guilty on during a trial in June 2024, though the former president later pardoned his son before leaving office.
Key Background
This case is one of at least two major gun disputes the Supreme Court will consider this term, after justices also took up a case over Hawaii’s law prohibiting people from carrying handguns on private property without the property owner’s permission. The 6-3 conservative Supreme Court broadly paved the way for looser gun restrictions in 2022, when justices ruled against New York’s concealed carry law and said restrictions on guns must have some kind of historical precedent from the U.S.’s founding in order to be lawful. While that led to numerous gun restrictions getting struck down in courts nationwide, justices then clarified in 2024 that some restrictions on guns are still permissible, upholding a federal statute that bars domestic abusers from owning firearms. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in that opinion that the Second Amendment is “not unlimited,” and Americans can be “temporarily disarmed” under the Second Amendment if they’ve “been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another.”