The nation's high court on Thursday unanimously sided with a man prosecuted for possessing a gun while being a regular consumer of marijuana, holding the government violated his Second Amendment rights.

As previously reported by Guns.com, Ali Danial Hemani's case came to the U.S. Supreme Court via the U.S. Fifth Circuit and posed the question of whether "the federal statute that prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who 'is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance,' violates the Second Amendment as applied to respondent." 

In a 9-0 ruling, the Supremes concurred with the Fifth Circuit and held that the federal government can't take away gun rights from someone just because they occasionally use marijuana. In doing so, it brushed aside the Trump Justice Department's argument that historical laws disarming "habitual drunkards" support a modern disarmament of marijuana users.

As explained in part by Justice Neil Gorsuch in this week's 19-page ruling on United States v. Hemani (24-1234): 

(W)e do not question that sometimes an individual’s unlawful use of marijuana (or any other controlled substance) may render him a danger to others. But, again, the government disclaims the need to show anything like that in this case. Instead, it asks us to conclude that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous without any further showing. All based on little more than its current say-so, one at odds with its own regulatory actions. And affording the government that kind of ‘broad power to designate any group as dangerous and thereby disqualify its members from having a gun’ would risk allowing it to ‘quickly swallow’ the Second Amendment.

The ruling from the court stands to cloud further the water between perception and reality of how the current administration addresses the intercept between gun rights and state-level legal marijuana use. 

The ruling was met with acclaim by pro-gun groups, including the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, which had joined the case supporting Hemani in an amicus brief along with the Second Amendment Foundation, the California Rifle & Pistol Association, the Second Amendment Law Center, and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus.

"The federal statute, as the court rightly held, casts too wide a net," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb in an email to Guns.com on Thursday. "This one-size-fits-all approach to law enforcement has never worked. As we noted in our brief, historically, the government has never prohibited sober people from owning firearms because they sometimes drank alcohol. The same logic applies here, especially since so many states now allow recreational marijuana use, and its use as a prescribed medical aid is widely recognized."

Hemani was represented by the ACLU in conjunction with the CLEAR clinic at the CUNY School of Law, Clement & Murphy, and Newland Legal.

"Today’s unanimous 9-0 decision makes it clear that the government cannot make it a crime for people to own a gun, which the Supreme Court has held is a fundamental constitutional right, simply because they use marijuana,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director at the ACLU. "With nearly half of Americans reporting marijuana use at some point in their lives, this ruling protects the rights of millions and curbs the government’s ability to impose arbitrary and discriminatory penalties." 

Of note, anti-gun groups Brady and Giffords had sided with the Justice Department in the case, arguing in a brief to the court that it was important that the ability of legislatures to strip gun rights from entire categories of people be preserved. Said groups are historically big fans of categorical prohibitions on firearms ownership. 

Going beyond Hemani, the court is expected to soon issue a ruling in Wolford v. Lopez (No. 24-1046), which tests whether states can ban licensed CCW carriers from bringing firearms onto private property open to the public without express permission. Similarly, the Duncan v. Bonta case on magazine capacity limits has been circulated to the court over 20 times for conference and is still alive. 

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