The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the government cannot strip people of their gun rights simply because they have a history of illegal drug use. In a unanimous decision, the justices found that a longstanding federal ban barring drug users from owning firearms is too broad and unconstitutional. The ruling means a person can no longer be denied a gun solely because they use marijuana.
For decades, federal law has made it illegal to own a gun for anyone considered a drug addict or who uses illegally controlled substances for any period of time. That prohibition applied even to marijuana, despite the fact that 40 states have now legalized the drug in some form. The court concluded that applying the ban so broadly went beyond what the constitution allows.
The decision centered on a case involving a gun owner from Texas who used marijuana several times a week. He was prosecuted after authorities found that he kept a firearm at his home along with marijuana. According to the account presented, he was not intoxicated at the time and was not holding the weapon, yet federal prosecutors still pursued charges against him.
Prosecutors had relied on the law in question to bring cases at a steady rate, using it in roughly 300 prosecutions a year. The Texas case became the vehicle through which the broader constitutional question reached the nation's highest court. The justices ultimately sided against the way the statute had been applied to ordinary drug users.
The opinion was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who laid out the court's reasoning for striking down the blanket restriction. In the ruling, the justices likened marijuana use to alcohol use, a comparison that undercut the rationale for automatically treating drug users differently when it comes to owning a gun.
The decision amounts to a rollback of a long-established restriction on firearm access in the country. It removes the automatic disqualification that had applied to people who use controlled substances, narrowing how broadly the government can deny gun rights on that basis. The outcome was described as a win for the Texas gun owner at the center of the case.
The ruling lands in a country where marijuana laws have shifted dramatically, with a large share of states having legalized the drug in some form even as it remains controlled at the federal level. While questions remain over how authorities will handle future cases, the court made clear that drug use alone is no longer sufficient grounds to bar someone from owning a firearm. The case had been closely watched as a test of where gun rights and drug laws intersect.