The Supreme Court seemed poised Monday to weaken a law barring drug addicts from purchasing firearms, which was used to convict Hunter Biden, after a majority of justices expressed skepticism about its vagueness.
In a case that scrambled the traditional ideological lines on the high court, a majority of justices hammered the Trump administration for defending the prosecution of a Texas man, Ali Danial Hemani, for allegedly admitting to using weed multiple times a week while owning a gun.
The high court could also make a narrow ruling on the case, specific to concerns that prosecutors didn’t prove Hemani’s marijuana use was dangerous.
“What if he took one gummy bear with a medical prescription in Colorado?” conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch asked Sarah Harris, the US deputy solicitor general. “Let’s say he had one to help him sleep every other day. Disarm him for life?”
Harris conceded that it would under the theory she was arguing.
Prosecutors alleged that Hemani used marijuana frequently, though they did not claim that he was under the influence when he purchased a Glock 19 9mm pistol in 2022. Cocaine was also discovered at his home when the feds searched it. The lower courts dismissed the case on Second Amendment grounds.
Notably, Biden, 56, who was not involved in Monday’s case before the Supreme Court, had been convicted on that same charge and two others by a jury in 2024 prior to being pardoned by his father.
Gorsuch was joined by liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, in asking particularly pointed questions of Harris.
“We have to remember the founding era, if you want to invoke the founding era,” Gorsuch contended, noting that the American Temperance Society “said eight shots of whiskey a day only made you an occasional drunkard.”
“John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn’t much of a user of alcohol; he only had three or four glasses of wine a night,” he continued. “Are they all habitual drunkards who would be properly disarmed for life under your theory?”
Other justices who raised concerns about the law fussed over the lack of clarity about where the line is on when someone is an addict or whether the government did a proper analysis on all the drugs deemed dangerous. There were also concerns that the feds have sent mixed signals on weed.
“It seems like you’re asking us to trust Congress’ legislative judgment on whether unlawful drug users pose a high risk of misuse, but that this test doesn’t provide us a way to check that in any meaningful sense,” Jackson told Harris.
Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative Justice Samuel Alito appeared skeptical of the push to toss out Hemani’s case.
“I’m just puzzled by most of your argument,” Alito told Erin Murphy, an attorney arguing on behalf of Hemani. “Suppose someone regularly takes a drug, and during the period when that person is taking the drug, that person is super dangerous …The Second Amendment would not permit Congress to say: ‘That’s too risky’?”
Roberts similarly raised concerns that Murphy was taking “a fairly cavalier approach to the necessary consideration of expertise and the judgments we leave to Congress and the executive branch.”
Over recent years, the Supreme Court has leaned toward gun rights advocates in high-profile cases revolving around the Second Amendment.
The high court is also weighing another Second Amendment case this term about a Hawaii law restricting the carrying of handguns on private property that welcomes the public unless given permission. The Supreme Court seemed leery of Hawaii’s law during oral arguments in January.
