The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case to determine the constitutionality of a federal law prohibiting anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from possessing a firearm. The high court “granted review in United States v. Hemani, involving the federal government’s efforts to prosecute a Texas man for violating a federal statute that prohibits gun possession by users of illegal drugs,” SCOTUSblog stated. The Justice Department appealed a lower court’s ruling that past drug use alone cannot prohibit an individual from possessing a firearm under the Second Amendment. LEGAL ALERT: The Supreme Court has granted the cert petition in United States v. Hemani, which challenges 922(g)(3) (the federal drug user gun ban) https://t.co/PxDqn6hkyq pic.twitter.com/ott8sgUrnA — Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) October 20, 2025 SCOTUSblog has more: The dispute began after FBI agents searched the home of Ali Danial Hemani. They found a Glock 9 mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine, which led prosecutors to charge him with violating the law now at the center of the case. Hemani asked the district court to dismiss the charge, arguing that applying the law to him violated the Constitution. U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant granted Hemani’s request, with the government’s agreement. He relied on a 2023 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit invalidating a conviction under the same law when “the jury did not necessarily find that” the defendant in that case “was presently or even recently engaged in unlawful drug use.” The 5th Circuit upheld Mazzant’s decision. The government came to the Supreme Court in June, asking the justices to take up the case. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer acknowledged that “[t]he Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right that is essential to ordered liberty,” and that “[u]njustifiable restrictions on that right present a grave threat to Americans’ most cherished freedoms.” But, Sauer continued, the federal law at the center of the case is one of the “narrow circumstances in which the government may justifiably burden that right.” First, he contended, because the law bars only habitual drug users from having a gun, it “imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction—one which the individual can remove at any time simply by ceasing his unlawful drug use.” Second, he wrote, the law “stands solidly within our Nation’s history and tradition of regulation” of firearms, a key inquiry in determining whether gun restrictions are constitutional. Sauer characterized the law as “a modest, modern analogue” of early American restrictions on the possession of guns by “habitual drunkards.” Third, he added, “habitual illegal drug users with firearms present unique dangers to society—especially because they pose a grave risk of armed, hostile encounters with police officers while impaired.” Supreme Court Will Consider Overturning Federal Ban On Drug Users Owning Gunshttps://t.co/ax7odHUTal pic.twitter.com/D4OcnV3253 — Forbes (@Forbes) October 20, 2025 USA TODAY noted that Hunter Biden was convicted in 2024 of violating the law by “purchasing a gun despite having a known drug addiction.” Hunter Biden received a preemptive pardon from Joe Biden. Hunter Biden guilty of felony gun charges, faces 25 years in prison https://t.co/6iKyrkdofz pic.twitter.com/5E9doxtUF5 — New York Post (@nypost) June 11, 2024 USA TODAY shared further info: The DOJ’s defense of the law is particularly notable as the Trump administration has sided with gun rights advocates in other cases. That includes backing a challenge to Hawaii’s strict rules about where people can have guns, which the Supreme Court agreed to hear this term. But the department asked the high court to reverse multiple lower court rulings about pot smokers and guns. The government most wanted the justices to take a case involving a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan who was charged with unlawfully owning a Glock pistol because he regularly smoked marijuana. The FBI had been monitoring Ali Danial Hemani because of his alleged connection to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which the government has designated a global terrorist group, according to filings. The government also alleges Hemani used and sold promethazine, an antihistamine used to treat allergies and motion sickness that can boost an opioid high, and used cocaine, although he was prosecuted based on his marijuana use. Hemani’s attorneys said the government is trying to “inflame and disparage” Hemani’s character, and the only facts that matter are that he was not high when the FBI found the Glock 19 in his Lewisville, Texas, home. Hemani was charged with violating the federal law that prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”