WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide if “habitual drug users” should lose their gun rights under the Second Amendment.

The Trump administration is defending a federal gun control law dating to 1968 and challenging the rulings of two conservative appeals courts that struck down the ban on gun possession by any “unlawful user” of illegal drugs, including marijuana.

President Donald Trump’s solicitor general, D. John Sauer, described the right to keep and bear arms as “fundamental ... and essential to ordered liberty.” If this right were restricted unduly, he told the court, it would “present a grave threat to Americans’ most cherished freedoms.”

But there are “narrow circumstances” that call for limiting gun rights, he said. Well-armed drug addicts “present unique dangers to society — especially because they pose a grave risk of armed, hostile encounters with police officers while impaired,” he said.

University of California, Los Angeles law professor Adam Winkler said the administration’s stand is not entirely surprising. “Gun cases sometimes pose a dilemma for law-and-order conservatives,” he said.

He noted that last year, the Supreme Court rejected a Second Amendment claim from a Texas man who was charged with domestic violence.

In most instances, he said, conservatives would be inclined to support punishments for drug abusers. However, both gun rights supporters and critics of the drug laws have questioned the harsh criminal penalties for mere gun possession. They point out that tens of millions of Americans are both marijuana users and gun owners.

A defense lawyer for the Texas man whose case will be heard argued it was especially unfair for a gun owner to face a potential long prison term for using marijuana that is legal in many states.

“Millions of Americans are currently violating” the federal law, said attorney Zachary Newland of Evergreen, Colorado. If they possess a firearm, they could be charged and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison, he added.

He said the U.S. appeals court in New Orleans was right to rule that such a harsh penalty for gun possession violated the Second Amendment.

Last year, Hunter Biden, former President Joe Biden’s son, faced a prison term of up to 25 years after being convicted under the law at issue.

He had applied for a gun permit in 2018 and falsely denied on the application that he was addicted to illegal drugs. He kept the gun for only 11 days, but was convicted of three felonies. His father gave him a full pardon.

Three years ago, the court ruled the Second Amendment gave law-abiding Americans a right to obtain a concealed carry permit for a firearm.

The opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas said the court would only uphold restrictions on guns that were consistent with early American history when the Second Amendment was adopted.

Trump’s lawyers say the limit on gun rights for drug users passes that test because “common drunkards” were prohibited then from having guns.

By that measure, the law restricting drug users “fits within our regulatory tradition,” they said. “Vagrancy and civil commitment laws subjected drunkards to confinement in prisons, workhouses or asylums.”

And they argued this “modest, modern” limit makes sense today.

The government says the ban applies only to addicts and “habitual users of illegal drugs,” not to all those who have used drugs on occasion or in the past.

Under this interpretation, the law “imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction — one which the individual can remove at any time simply by ceasing his unlawful drug use,” the administration’s attorneys told the court.

The appeal noted that 32 states have laws restricting gun possession by drug users and drug addicts, all of which could be nullified by a broad reading of the Second Amendment.

The court said it will hear the case of a Texas man, a Pakistani native, who came under investigation by the FBI for allegedly working with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

When agents with a warrant searched the home of Ali Denali Hemani, they found a Glock pistol, 60 grams of marijuana and 4.7 grams of cocaine. He told the agents he used marijuana about every other day.

He was charged with violating the federal gun control law, but the 5th Circuit Court in New Orleans ruled this ban on gun possession violates the Second Amendment unless the defendant was under the influence of drugs when he was arrested.

The 8th Circuit Court based in St. Louis adopted a similar view that a gun ban for drug users is unconstitutional.

The Trump administration asked the justices to hear the case of U.S. vs. Hemani and to reverse the two lower courts. Arguments are likely to be heard in January or February.

It is the second gun rights case to be decided this term. The justices will decide if Hawaii and other states may prohibit the carrying of concealed guns into a business or onto other private property without the express permission of the owner.

The outcome in that case, Wolford vs. Lopez, is likely to affect a similar law in California.

Last year, the justices rejected a gun rights claim in another case from Texas and ruled that a man charged with domestic violence can lose his rights to have firearms.

Historically, people who “threaten physical harm to others” have lost their legal rights to guns, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in an 8-1 decision.

So far, however, the court has turned down Second Amendment challenges to the laws in blue states that restrict the sale or possession of rapid-fire “assault weapons.”

_____

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.