US Supreme Court to weigh law barring drug users from owning guns

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By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration in a case out of Texas to defend a federal law that bars users of illegal drugs from owning guns – one of the statutes under which former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was charged in 2023.

The justices took up the Justice Department’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling involving a dual American-Pakistani citizen named Ali Hemani, who was charged with violating this law, that found the gun restriction largely ran afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case and issue a ruling by the end of June.

The case stems from an illegal gun possession charge that federal prosecutors brought against Hemani, described as a regular marijuana user, after the FBI found a pistol belonging to him during an unrelated 2022 raid of the home he shared with his parents in Denton County, Texas. Authorities did not allege that Hemani was intoxicated at the time he was found with the gun.

In a filing to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said Hemani’s actions had “drawn the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and it mentioned his travel to Iran, his brother’s attendance at an Iranian university and comments by his mother about her sons.

The filing did not explain the reason for the raid at the family home. The Justice Department said agents found a Glock 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana and 4.7 grams of cocaine. The 2023 indictment did not include any charges beyond the one related to Hemani’s gun possession and unlawful drug use.

Hemani moved to dismiss the charge, claiming it violated his Second Amendment rights. He also cited the stringent test the Supreme Court set in a 2022 decision requiring that gun laws be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” in order to comport with the Second Amendment.

Zachary Newland, a lawyer for Hemani, expressed disappointment that the court agreed to hear the Trump administration’s appeal.

“However, we are hopeful that the government’s case will be denied once the Supreme Court is able to hear Mr. Hemani’s case on the merits,” Newland said. “Mr. Hemani’s case implicates important fundamental constitutional rights that we believe will be vindicated in the end.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The prohibition on gun possession by users of illegal drugs was part of the landmark Gun Control Act of 1968. One of the charges against Hunter Biden in an indictment obtained by Special Counsel David Weiss in September 2023 accused him of violating this statute. Prosecutors accused the president’s son of lying about his use of narcotics when he purchased a Colt Cobra handgun in October 2018.

Hunter Biden was found guilty in June 2024 by a jury in Wilmington, Delaware, becoming the first child of a sitting U.S. president to be convicted of a crime. Joe Biden, a Democrat, issued a presidential pardon in December 2024 to his son, a recovering drug addict who became a frequent target of Republicans, including Trump.

In the Hemani case, the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January dismissed the illegal gun possession charge, ruling that “there is no historical justification for disarming a sober citizen not presently under an impairing influence.”

Trump’s administration appealed to the Supreme Court, urging the justices to adopt a rule that would allow illegal gun possession charges to be brought against “habitual users” of unlawful drugs.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)