What is unfolding in United States v. Hemani has become the broadest and most ideologically diverse amicus coalitions the U.S. Supreme Court has seen in a Second Amendment case involving cannabis.
In total, more than 30 organizations have now signed onto or submitted 15 separate amicus briefs in United States v. Hemani, all urging the Court to affirm the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) cannot be used to categorically strip marijuana users of their right to possess a firearm based solely on their status as “unlawful users” of a controlled substance.
The newest wave of filings includes briefs from the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation, attorney William R. Weinstein, the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs and Gun Owners’ Action League, a coalition led by Gun Owners of America that also includes Gun Owners Foundation, Gun Owners of California, Heller Foundation, Tennessee Firearms Association, Tennessee Firearms Foundation, Virginia Citizens Defense League, Virginia Citizens Defense Foundation, America’s Future, U.S. Constitutional Rights Legal Defense Fund, and Conservative Legal Defense and Education Fund, the National Rifle Association, FPC Action Foundation, and Independence Institute, NORML, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
These join earlier briefs from the Center for Human Liberty, Firearms Policy Coalition, National Association for Gun Rights, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Drug Policy Alliance, the ACLU, and Liberty Justice Center.
While the organizations come from dramatically different political and legal traditions, their arguments converge on a central theme, that the federal statute criminalizes status, not conduct.
The Cato and Reason brief focuses heavily on the Supreme Court’s Bruen and Rahimi framework, arguing § 922(g)(3) fails the required historical test because founding-era laws targeted active intoxication, not broad status-based disarmament. Their filing also stresses the statute’s vagueness and how it threatens to deny constitutional rights to millions of Americans.
William Weinstein’s brief emphasizes that, as applied today, § 922(g)(3) reaches far beyond anything the Second Amendment permits by sweeping in tens of millions of ordinary Americans who live in states where marijuana use is legal under state law. He argues the statute effectively transforms lawful, everyday conduct into a basis for permanent federal disarmament, creating an overbreadth problem of constitutional scale. The brief frames this as a mismatch between a narrow historical tradition of regulating dangerous conduct and a modern law that punishes status alone, warning that the government’s interpretation would allow federal law to nullify core constitutional rights for an enormous segment of the population without any individualized showing of risk.
The New Jersey and Massachusetts firearms groups focus less on marijuana itself and more on what they view as a growing problem in how lower courts are applying Bruen. Their brief argues that courts are using historical analogies at such a high level of generality that the outcome is effectively predetermined before the analysis begins. By framing broad historical “principles” rather than closely examining how and why specific founding-era regulations operated, they contend that courts are sidestepping the rigorous analogical reasoning Bruen requires. They urge the Supreme Court to clarify that historical comparisons must be concrete, representative, and grounded in the actual mechanics of past firearm regulations, not abstract themes that can be stretched to justify modern laws.
The Gun Owners of America coalition takes a more structural warning approach, arguing that if the Court allows Congress to disarm people based on a legislative claim that a category of citizens is “dangerous,” there would be little stopping future lawmakers from applying that logic to other disfavored groups. Their brief suggests that § 922(g)(3) is not just about marijuana users but about whether the government can expand categorical firearm bans through broad assertions of public safety without firm historical grounding. They argue this would erode the limits the Second Amendment places on government power and open the door to disarmament based on shifting political or social judgments rather than constitutional principles.
The NRA, FPC Action Foundation, and Independence Institute brief presents an extensive historical record to argue that early American regulations focused on conduct while intoxicated, not on stripping people of firearm rights based on their status as users of an intoxicant. The brief surveys colonial, founding-era, and 19th-century laws showing restrictions on carrying or discharging firearms while drunk, limits on selling firearms to visibly intoxicated individuals, and rules governing militiamen who were actively under the influence. According to the brief, these laws were temporary, situation-specific safety measures tied directly to impairment, not permanent or status-based prohibitions. By contrasting those historical intoxication rules with § 922(g)(3), the amici argue the federal statute bears little resemblance to the types of regulations that actually existed in early America and instead imposes a categorical ban untethered to any historical tradition of firearm regulation.
NORML’s brief takes a different angle, arguing cannabis has been part of American life since the founding, that alcohol has a far stronger historical link to violence, and that modern federal and state policy treats marijuana as a legitimate medicine and regulated commodity — making categorical disarmament incompatible with current law and history.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers focuses on how § 922(g)(3) fails the Bruen “how and why” test in practice, noting that historical analogues like vagrancy laws, surety laws, and civil commitment laws bear little resemblance to a permanent firearms ban based on drug status.
Other briefs emphasize the statute’s vagueness, its reliance on undefined terms like “unlawful user,” the lack of any historical tradition of disarming sober citizens for substance use, and the practical contradiction that someone can legally purchase a firearm after a federal background check yet still be prosecuted for possessing it because of marijuana use.
Taken together, the filings form an unusually broad coalition: libertarian think tanks, civil liberties groups, criminal defense attorneys, major gun rights organizations, state-level firearms associations, and marijuana policy advocates all telling the Court the same thing from different legal angles.
All 15 amicus briefs, in addition to other legal documents regarding United States v. Hemani, can be found by clicking here.
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