What the Supreme Court’s Hemani Ruling Means for Gun Ownership

Last updated 4 weeks ago. Our resources are updated regularly but please keep in mind that links, programs, policies, and contact information do change.

Ali Danial Hemani’s marijuana use became the government’s reason for charging him with illegally keeping a gun at home under a federal law that bars unlawful drug users from having firearms. He admitted using marijuana about every other day. In June 2026, the Supreme Court rejected a prosecution based solely on that regular use.

That result matters beyond Hemani’s case because the Court rejected regular marijuana use alone as a reason to automatically disqualify someone from possessing a gun. It does not give every marijuana user permission to buy or possess a gun. The decision’s limit on regular-use prosecutions does not resolve restrictions on people who are addicted or currently intoxicated.

What the Supreme Court actually decided

The Court decided United States v. Hemani on June 18, 2026, after hearing arguments on March 2, 2026. It affirmed the judgment of the court below, and its formal judgment has issued.

The case began in 2022, when the government searched Hemani’s home because it suspected him of terrorism-related activities. Hemani surrendered a gun he kept in the house and told agents about his marijuana use. More than six months after the search, the government brought a single charge: possessing a gun at home while an unlawful user of a controlled substance. The charge relied solely on his admitted marijuana use and had nothing to do with terrorism or drug trafficking.

A federal district court had dismissed the indictment, and the Fifth Circuit appeals court affirmed, holding the prosecution foreclosed by its own precedent. The question before the justices was whether that ban on gun possession by unlawful drug users violated the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms, as applied to Hemani. An as-applied challenge tests a law’s use in a particular situation; it need not show that every possible use of the law is unconstitutional.

All the justices agreed to affirm the judgment, although Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan joined only the judgment rather than Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion.

The right to bear arms still has limits

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court recognized an individual right to possess a firearm without serving in a militia, including for self-defense in the home. Heller also said the right is not unlimited and did not cast doubt on longstanding restrictions concerning felons, mental illness or carrying guns in sensitive places. A constitutional right and enforceable limits can coexist; the difficult question is which limits the Constitution permits.

McDonald v. City of Chicago held that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment right recognized in Heller. State and local gun laws must therefore respect the right, just as federal laws must. Any proposal to ban ordinary handgun possession for self-defense at home, whether federal, state or local, runs into that right.

New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen rejected New York’s proper-cause rule for public carry because it excluded people with ordinary self-defense needs. Under Bruen, when the Second Amendment’s text covers what a person is doing, the government must show that its regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Showing that a law serves an important public purpose is therefore not enough.

In United States v. Rahimi, the Court held that a person may be banned from possessing firearms while under a restraining order that finds the person a credible threat to an intimate partner’s physical safety. Rahimi explained that a modern law need not be an exact historical twin to fit the principles underlying the regulatory tradition. The test calls for a meaningful comparison of the restriction and its justification, not a search for an old statute with identical wording. That is why the arguments in Hemani turned on historical laws about drunkenness.

Why regular marijuana use was not enough in Hemani

In its Supreme Court brief, the United States argued that historical laws confined habitual drunkards in jails, workhouses or asylums, or required them to post bonds backed by the threat of jail. The government described temporary disarmament of habitual drug users as a less severe version of those historical restraints. Its argument was preventive: the claimed danger lasted between episodes of intoxication, so the restriction should too.

The government’s brief argued that surety laws, which required a bond for future good behavior, applied to common drunkards and were not limited to immediate intoxication. It also called the drug-user restriction temporary, arguing that firearm possession could resume when habitual unlawful drug use stopped.

Hemani’s lawyers argued that historical intoxication laws restricted carrying or using firearms while impaired, rather than keeping a safely secured gun at home while sober. Their brief stressed that the government had not alleged he handled the gun while under the influence. They also argued that marijuana use a few times a week, without evidence about quantity or circumstances, did not establish the equivalent of historical habitual drunkenness. Frequency alone, in their argument, left out the impairment that made the historical comparison relevant.

Hemani’s brief confined the case to the unlawful-user charge based on marijuana, while acknowledging potential historical support for restrictions on intoxication or addiction. He asked the Court to affirm the judgment below. The competing positions were about how much the government could infer from drug use, not whether intoxication can ever matter to firearm safety.

The majority concluded that historical habitual-drunkard restrictions targeted people whose drinking left them incapacitated and unable to manage their affairs, not simply regular consumers of intoxicants. The government’s comparison therefore failed at the point that mattered: being a regular user did not establish the condition those historical laws addressed.

The ruling is a narrow one. It does not address bans on gun possession by addicts or by people who are presently intoxicated, the ban on possession by people convicted of felonies, or prosecutions supported by evidence of an individual’s drug-related danger. Those unresolved questions are limits on the holding, not findings that every such restriction is valid or invalid.

What the drug-user law and regulation say now

Section 922(g)(3) of federal firearm law prohibits possession by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Other parts of section 922(g) separately cover categories including people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year in prison and fugitives from justice. A successful argument about marijuana use does not dispose of an independent prohibition based on a conviction or another status.

The current regulation defines an unlawful user as someone who regularly uses a controlled substance over an extended period continuing into the present, without a lawful prescription or in a substantially different manner from the prescription. The regulation requires sufficient regularity and recency, even though use need not occur at the precise time of firearm possession. That was the regulation’s wording as of October 4, 2026. The regulatory definition and the constitutional limit answer different questions: who falls within the category, and when the government may constitutionally act on it.

The definition, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), expressly excludes a person who has stopped regularly using a drug unlawfully and one whose unlawful use is isolated or sporadic or otherwise shows no ongoing pattern. It removed the earlier examples used to infer unlawful-user status and also excludes slight, immaterial deviations from a lawful prescription. Past use is therefore not a reliable stand-in for current status, and a lifetime ban cannot be inferred from a past episode alone.

In Rehaif v. United States, the Court required proof that a defendant knew of the firearm possession and knew they belonged to the relevant prohibited category. That knowledge requirement is another part of a prosecution, distinct from whether the prohibition passes the Second Amendment test.

Marijuana rules and firearm purchase paperwork are separate

An April 2026 order by the attorney general moved two kinds of marijuana from schedule I to schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act: marijuana in products approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and marijuana in any form covered by a state medical marijuana license. Unlicensed bulk marijuana stays in schedule I under the order. Schedule III drugs are still controlled substances under that act, so the move does not by itself settle whether a person’s use is lawful or whether that person may have a firearm.

Federal drug schedules group controlled substances by medical use, abuse potential and dependence risk. Schedule I generally describes drugs with high abuse potential and no currently accepted medical use, while schedule III describes drugs with accepted medical use and lower abuse potential than schedules I and II.

The order defines a state medical marijuana license as a state, District of Columbia or territorial license to manufacture, distribute or dispense marijuana for medical purposes. Federal law still makes knowing possession of a controlled substance unlawful unless it was obtained from a practitioner as the statute allows or is otherwise federally authorized.

The April order says marijuana outside its FDA-approved-product and state-medical-license categories remains in schedule I, subject to federal regulatory controls and administrative, civil and criminal sanctions.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) proceeding on proposed marijuana rescheduling was stayed, or paused, by an order dated September 29, 2026. Three parties had asked to add a Government Accountability Office report on drug-scheduling policies to the hearing record and allow supplemental briefing; the order paused the matter pending resolution of that motion and set October 13, 2026, as the government’s response deadline. That response deadline is not a date for final rescheduling, and the broader proceeding should not be confused with the limited order already in effect.

Federal regulation requires a licensed gun dealer to obtain a Form 4473 from the buyer, on which the buyer certifies that they are not federally prohibited. The form is ATF’s Firearms Transaction Record, and the existing edition is dated August 2023. That edition asks purchasers about unlawful use or addiction to marijuana and other controlled substances and warns that state legalization does not change federal law. It instructs the dealer to stop the transaction when there is reasonable cause to believe the transfer is prohibited, including when the buyer gives certain answers.

In a July 29, 2026 notice, ATF said it was asking the Office of Management and Budget to extend the existing form without change, so that dealers continue to have a valid form while it addresses comments on proposed revisions. Until a revised form is issued, the existing form’s marijuana question still applies as written; a proposed revision is not proof that new instructions have taken effect.

The current OMB record lists the extension as received for review and the previously approved collection as expiring on October 31, 2026.

Federal law separately prohibits knowingly false statements to a licensed seller about facts material to a lawful sale. A ruling about possession is not permission to ignore a purchase form or leave out relevant information. Check the issued ATF form and obtain advice about the specific prohibition before relying on a headline to complete a transaction.

Permits and certificates were not all struck down

Hemani decided nothing about gun permits, background checks or purchase certificates. Bruen expressly said its analysis did not make ordinary carry-licensing systems unconstitutional. Those systems grant a permit when an applicant meets the legal requirements, without demanding a special self-defense need. Removing a special-need requirement is different from abolishing a licensing system or every background check.

California’s Department of Justice says its Certificate of Eligibility certifies that the department checked its records and found the recipient was not prohibited from acquiring or possessing firearms at the time of the background check. California requires that certificate for specified firearm-related licensees and workers, including prospective dealers and ammunition vendors. Neither Bruen, which addressed a public-carry rule, nor Hemani, which addressed a drug-user prosecution, struck down firearm certificates such as California’s.

The Supreme Court’s official docket system provides case-status information for both pending and decided cases and permits searches by case name or docket number. To check a claim that the Court issued a new gun ruling on a particular date, identify the case and read what the Court actually decided. Hemani’s argument date, its decision date and the dates of agency rules are separate events; they do not add up to a nationwide repeal of gun laws.

Restoration is a separate route to firearm rights

Under section 925(c) of federal firearm law, the Attorney General may restore a prohibited person’s firearm rights when the applicant is not likely to endanger public safety and restoration is consistent with the public interest. That is an individualized restoration decision, rather than an automatic consequence of winning someone else’s constitutional case.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) scheduled applications to open in stages: to invited candidates on September 25, 2026; to the public, for the first 5,000 candidates, on November 4, 2026; and for 500 more candidates on January 4, 2027, when the application fee begins. Its page labels the general online application as coming soon. That was its status as of October 4, 2026. Check the program’s application page to see whether an application can be submitted yet.

DOJ lists a $30 application fee, possible additional fingerprint and record costs, and a possible fee waiver or reduction for applicants unable to afford the fee. Under the announced schedule, fee collection begins with the January 4, 2027 stage.

Under DOJ’s guide to the rule, a person who unlawfully uses drugs or is addicted to them must show extraordinary circumstances to obtain relief, except when the only drug is marijuana. That exception eases one restoration hurdle; it does not guarantee relief or eliminate a separate disqualification.

Federal law does not count certain convictions: those that have been expunged, set aside or pardoned, or for which civil rights have been restored, unless the pardon, expungement or restoration expressly bars the person from having firearms. DOJ warns that federal restoration does not automatically restore state or tribal firearm rights. Restoration must address the actual source of the prohibition, including any restriction that survives in another legal system.

A person denied restoration under section 925(c) may seek review in the federal district court where they reside. A person denied by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) because of an inaccurate record, or a record that does not show rights already restored, can instead apply to the agency that issued the denial to have it corrected. Correcting the record and obtaining new relief are different remedies, so the reason for the denial determines the next step.