Hunter Biden walked free after his father pardoned him for this exact charge.
Now the same law is back before the Supreme Court – and Justice Neil Gorsuch just handed the government its worst day in years.
Find out what Gorsuch said that left the DOJ lawyer standing there with no answer.
Supreme Court Tears Apart the 1968 Gun Ban Marijuana Users Have Lived Under for Decades
The case is United States v. Hemani, and it centers on a 1968 federal law that strips gun rights from anyone who is an "unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance."
Ali Hemani, a Texas resident, admitted to FBI agents that he used marijuana every other day.
Agents searching his home found a Glock 9mm and 60 grams of marijuana.
The government charged him with illegal gun possession.
The Trump DOJ argued that founding-era laws disarming "habitual drunkards" gave them historical cover – the standard required under the Supreme Court's 2022 Bruen decision, which demands that any gun restriction trace back to a genuine founding-era parallel.
Gorsuch wasn't buying it.
"John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day," Gorsuch told the government's lawyer. "James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn't much of a user of alcohol – he only had three or four glasses of wine a night."
Then he delivered the kill shot: "Are they all habitual drunkards who would be properly disarmed for life under your theory?"
The DOJ lawyer had no clean answer.
Gorsuch pushed further – asking whether a man taking one cannabis gummy before bed every other day to help him sleep should lose his gun rights for life.
The government conceded that under its own theory, yes.
The courtroom knew exactly what had just happened.
The Gun Law That Trapped Hunter Biden Is on Life Support
This is the same statute that put Hunter Biden in federal court in 2024, convicted of possessing a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine.
Joe Biden issued his son a full pardon on his last day in office – after promising the country he wouldn't do it.
The pardon spared Hunter prison time but didn't restore his law license, which he lost as a result of the convictions.
Now Hunter is watching this case closely.
If the Supreme Court strikes down the law, his legal team has signaled they'll use the ruling to seek further relief – potentially a path back to the bar.
The NRA, Gun Owners of America, and the Firearms Policy Coalition are all supporting Hemani.
They've been joined by the ACLU in one of the stranger legal alliances Washington has seen in years.
A federal appeals court already sided with Hemani, concluding that nothing in America's founding-era tradition supports stripping gun rights from a sober person based solely on past drug use.
The Supreme Court took the case because lower courts are divided on it.
A decision is expected by late June 2026.
Why Gorsuch and the NRA Are Aligned on Marijuana and Your Gun Rights
The Bruen decision in 2022 changed everything.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that gun restrictions are only constitutional if the government can point to a genuinely similar law from the founding era – not similar in spirit, but similar in kind.
The habitual drunkard laws the government is relying on didn't disarm everyone who drank regularly.
They targeted people whose alcohol abuse had rendered them incapable of managing their own affairs – people committed to poorhouses, stripped of civil standing entirely.
A Texas man who uses marijuana a few times a week and keeps a legally purchased handgun safely stored in his home is not that person.
The government's argument requires the court to accept an analogy so stretched that the Founding Fathers themselves would have been disarmed under it.
Gorsuch didn't let that pass quietly.
Neither did Amy Coney Barrett, who said she was flat-out "stuck" because there was no evidence Hemani's marijuana use made him dangerous to anyone.
This is where the DOJ's position gets embarrassing.
The Justice Department is defending a law that its own president is simultaneously trying to gut – Trump signed an executive order instructing his attorney general to move ahead with reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous substance.
They're in court arguing that marijuana users are too dangerous to own guns while the White House is quietly moving marijuana off the most serious federal drug schedule.
The Second Amendment isn't a prosecutorial convenience.
It's a constitutional right.
And the court that handed conservatives the Bruen victory three years ago appears ready to say exactly that – out loud, to the government's own lawyers.
Sources:
- Ashley Oliver, "Gorsuch name-checks Founding Fathers who were 'habitual' drinkers in SCOTUS fight over marijuana users," Fox News, March 4, 2026.
- Shawn Fleetwood, "Gun Restriction at the Heart of Hunter Biden Indictment Takes Center Stage at SCOTUS," The Federalist, March 3, 2026.
- Cam Edwards, "Hunter Biden Shouldn't Get His Hopes Up About SCOTUS and the Hemani Case," Bearing Arms, March 4, 2026.
- Amy Howe, "Supreme Court skeptical of law banning drug users from possessing firearms," SCOTUSblog, March 3, 2026.
- Dave Workman, "The Question: Will Supremes Say 'Yes' to Pot and Gun Ownership?" The Gun Mag, March 3, 2026.
