LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The Federal Gun Control Act makes it a crime for some people to have a firearm. That includes people who are unlawful users of a controlled substance. But the Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a Texas man who uses marijuana a few times a week and was facing up to 15 years in prison for having a gun. Here to talk about this decision is Amy Howe, the co-founder of SCOTUSblog. Good morning, and welcome back to the program, Amy.
AMY HOWE: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
FADEL: So Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the court's opinion. What was the ruling?
HOWE: Yeah. So the ruling is that this provision - the court did not say that it was unconstitutional in all cases, but that it was unconstitutional at least as applied to this man, Ali Hemani.
FADEL: So it's a very narrow ruling?
HOWE: Yes and no. I mean, it is a narrow ruling, Justice Gorsuch said, but it is fairly important because the government's reading was so broad. The government's argument was that, you know, we don't have to show that you are, you know, using marijuana or some illegal drug so often that you are incapacitated or a danger. All we need to show is that you use marijuana or some other illegal substance. Justice Gorsuch said, for example, someone who uses her spouse's Ambien could also be charged under this law and that you have a gun, and then you could face up to 15 years in prison. And so it's going to make it much harder to bring these kinds of prosecutions going forward.
FADEL: Is this seen as a win for groups that advocate for Second Amendment rights?
HOWE: It is a win in the sense that, you know, as Justice Gorsuch said in his opinion, you know, marijuana is pretty ubiquitous in our society. He said almost as many adults use marijuana as they do alcohol. You know, it is not something necessarily that is going to have a lot of impact necessarily on other gun rights cases going forward because the court's rulings in these cases seem to be pretty idiosyncratic.
The court said back in 2022 that if the government wants to place restrictions on gun rights, it needs to be able to point to similar restrictions in early U.S. history. And what the court said in this case is that the early U.S. history that the government pointed to in this case just doesn't work. But that doesn't mean that the next time the U.S. government or the state government wants to do it and comes up with some other historical analogy that it will or won't work.
And in fact, right now we're still waiting on another decision out of Hawaii. It's a challenge to a Hawaii law that bars gun owners from bringing guns onto private property without the property owner's express permission. And in that case, the U.S. government actually sided with the challengers, the people challenging the Hawaii law. And after the oral argument, the justices seemed skeptical of the Hawaii law. So there's not necessarily a through line in these gun rights cases.
FADEL: Really quickly, I mean, you point out how ubiquitous - or at least the ruling did - marijuana usage is now it's legal in 40 states. Federal government has moved marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, but it's also a federal crime still. So how did the ruling address that?
HOWE: Yeah. So Justice Gorsuch said, essentially, the government is kind of talking out of both sides of its mouth. As you say, while this litigation was going on, the government downgraded marijuana's classification, and it's legal in a lot of states. There's a lot fewer federal prosecutions for possession. It's just not dangerous, as the government says.
FADEL: Amy Howe is a co-founder of SCOTUSblog. Thank you for your time.
HOWE: Thank you.
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