A coalition of legal advocacy organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a brief (PDF) Saturday with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the federal government cannot strip marijuana users of their Second Amendment rights under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3). The filing comes in the case of United States v. Hemani and contends that the law is both unconstitutionally vague and unsupported by the nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.
The case centers on Ali Danial Hemani, who was charged solely for possessing a handgun in his home while admitting to using marijuana “a few times a week.” The brief emphasizes that the government is not accusing Hemani of carrying or using a firearm while intoxicated, nor of being addicted to any substance. Instead, the prosecution rests entirely on the claim that he qualifies as an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance because of his marijuana use.
According to the filing by the ACLU of Texas, the CLEAR Project at CUNY School of Law, and private counsel from Newland Legal and Clement & Murphy, the phrase “unlawful user” is nowhere defined in federal law, leaving courts for decades to guess what level of use qualifies. Judges across multiple circuits have adopted conflicting interpretations, requiring varying degrees of frequency, recency, and duration of drug use to justify prosecution. The brief argues that this confusion is proof that the statute fails to give ordinary people fair notice of what conduct is criminal, a core requirement of due process—especially when constitutional rights are involved.
The filing notes that the statute offers no guidance on whether someone who uses a controlled substance once a year, once a month, or occasionally in social settings could be considered an “unlawful user.” That uncertainty becomes even more problematic when the conduct at issue is keeping a firearm in the home for self-defense, an activity squarely protected by the Second Amendment.
Beyond the vagueness argument, the brief challenges the government’s attempt to justify the law through historical analogies. The government has pointed to old laws restricting firearm use while intoxicated, but the brief argues those laws targeted people actively under the influence—not people who used intoxicants days earlier and were fully sober while possessing firearms. Historical intoxication laws prohibited carrying or using guns while drunk, not keeping them in the home.
The government has also tried to compare modern marijuana users to historical “habitual drunkards,” but the brief argues that comparison fails. At the founding, even frequent alcohol consumption did not result in losing the right to own firearms. There was never a tradition of disarming people simply because they regularly consumed an intoxicating substance.
The filing further points out that most states today do not disarm marijuana users. Only a small handful have laws resembling the federal approach, and even those have been scaled back or modified as marijuana laws evolve. This, the brief argues, shows that the federal government’s position is not only historically unsupported but also an outlier in modern practice.
Adding to the complexity, the brief highlights that the federal government itself is in the process of reclassifying marijuana to Schedule III, officially recognizing it as having less potential for abuse and dependence than substances like heroin or methamphetamine. That shift, the brief suggests, undermines the claim that marijuana use alone justifies stripping someone of a constitutional right.
At its core, the argument presented to the Supreme Court is straightforward: there has never been a tradition in the United States of disarming people simply because they use an intoxicating substance with some degree of frequency. Applying §922(g)(3) in this way, the brief contends, would allow the government to deprive millions of otherwise law-abiding Americans of their right to keep a firearm in the home.
A separate amicus brief (PDF) was also filed this week by constitutional scholar and attorney Corey J. Biazzo, who urged the Court to reject the government’s reliance on status-based firearm bans untethered from any historical tradition of disarmament. His filing argues that early American firearm regulations targeted dangerous conduct—such as carrying weapons while intoxicated—not the personal habits of otherwise peaceable citizens, and warns that allowing federal drug classifications to dictate who may exercise Second Amendment rights would create a geographically inconsistent constitutional standard across the country.
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