The Supreme Court sided with a marijuana user over the Trump administration in the court’s latest Second Amendment ruling, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing for the court that the prosecution of Ali Danial Hemani ran afoul of the amendment.
The case involved a federal law that bans gun possession by someone who’s an “unlawful user” of, or addicted to, any controlled substance.
The Trump administration, which has cast itself as a great defender of the right to keep and bear arms, wanted to disarm Hemani due to what it called his “habitual use of marijuana.” In light of recent high court precedent that requires historical analogies to justify modern gun laws, the government pointed to laws from the time of the country’s founding that restricted the rights of “drunkards.”