The U.S. Supreme Court will be discussing several cases related to the gun rights of cannabis users later this week. A man, who admitted to lying on federal forms about marijuana usage and was prosecuted for it, is asking them to review the case.
Erik Harris’ attorneys said in a petition to the court filed late last year that “the government did not allege or attempt to establish that Harris had been drunk at the time he purchased firearms or any other time when carrying firearms” and that rulings of lower courts upholding a ban on firearms for cannabis consumers are “based loosely predictive judgments regarding their likelihood to be a threat if they were armed.”
This is one of numerous cases before different courts concerning the § 922(g)(3) statute prohibiting unlawful users of controlled substances from owning or possessing firearms.
Harris first appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Third Circuit. He argued that the law violated his Second Amendment right. The appeal was eventually rejected and Harris decided to take the case up with the Supreme Court.
The petition stated that “if taken to its logical end, the majority view would sanction an act disarming millions of Americans who drink beer or wine after dinner regularly.” This Court must intervene.
Also, the Justice Department requested recently that the Justices hear a gun-and marijuana case that was “selectively” brought before them. It had “highly unique facts,” which “evidently” the government viewed as favoring its position.
Court findings indicate that the defendant was not only a cannabis consumer, but he had also sold cocaine before.
The new filing was reported first by Law360. It states: “If the Court wants to examine the question (and the petitioner concurs that it should), it will be best served if it does so with a cleanly presented challenge from an individual who has smoked recreational marijuana and is not engaged in other more serious criminal conduct.” “This petition not only presents such a case but also offers the Court the opportunity to decide whether § 922(g)(3) is unconstitutionally vague.”
“The instant case allows the Court to focus directly on the government’s justification for disarming recreational marijuana users—a question of growing national importance, as roughly 74 percent of Americans live in states where marijuana is legal in some form,” it continues.
At a Friday meeting behind closed doors, Supreme Court justices plan to address several ongoing cases related to marijuana consumers’ Second Amendment right at an upcoming hearing.
This new petition comes at the same time as a separate request from the Justice Department to dismiss one case out of many pending ones concerning gun and marijuana rights. The Justice Department expects that the Justices will make an important precedent on this issue.
Tenth Circuit, in its ruling of August this year, ruled that if the government wants to apply a law that prohibits cannabis users from possessing firearms it must show that they “pose future danger”.
In 2023, the Justice Department filed an appeal against that decision and sent it to Tenth Circuit. The three-judge group said they agreed with the majority of the analysis of the District Court, and that included the challenge of federal claims to the ban on firearms by cannabis consumers based on historical precedent.
DOJ argued that this ban was historically in line with the prohibitions against gun ownership for people suffering from mental illnesses. In its ruling, the court of appeals said that “the current gun policy cannot be justified” by this standard.
The lower court largely based his initial decision on an interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling in which the justices generally created a higher standard for policies that seek to impose restrictions on gun rights.
This ruling says that such restrictions should be in line with the context of 1791’s Second Amendment ratification.
References to outdated case law that prevented Catholics (and loyalists), slaves (and Indians), and loyalists with guns were among the historical analogies that the Justice Department used to argue that the gun ban was consistent.
Circuit court said, “the government has to show that non-intoxicated users of marijuana pose a future risk” in order to justify the policy. This inquiry is better suited to the district courts, as it may require fact-finding.
This opinion comes nearly a year after the Tenth Circuit heard oral arguments in the case, with judges questioning not only the firearms prohibition itself but also whether it was within the scope of the appeals panel’s power to review the underlying lower court’s decision. They ultimately determined that the appeals panel did have that authority.
Meanwhile, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh District, judges recently ruled in favor of medical cannabis patients who want to exercise their Second Amendment rights to possess firearms.
As a recent report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) explained the current legal landscape, a growing number of federal courts are now “finding constitutional problems in the application of at least some parts” of the firearms prohibition.
In a July ruling, for instance, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated a defendant’s conviction and remanded the case back to a district court, noting that a retrial before a jury may be necessary to determine whether cannabis in fact caused the defendant to be dangerous or pose a credible threat to others.
By contrast, the Third Circuit last month said in a published opinion that district courts must make “individualized judgments” to determine whether 922(g)(3) is constitutional as applied to particular defendants.
A panel of appeals ruled that, although a person does not need to have “harmed anyone, threatened harm or otherwise acted in a dangerous manner to justify their disarmament,” history and gun laws require that “district court must make individual judgements, concluding that disarming an addict is required to mitigate the risk he will pose to others.”
Judges in that case noted that historical restrictions on gun ownership under “drunkenness and lunacy laws” in the U.S. “were still always based on an ‘individualized assessment’ rather than a categorical judgment.”
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that the ban was unconstitutional as applied to two defendants, writing that the government failed to establish that the “sweeping” prohibition against gun ownership by marijuana users was grounded in historical precedent.
A federal judge in El Paso separately ruled late last year that the government’s ongoing ban on gun ownership by habitual marijuana users is unconstitutional in the case of a defendant who earlier pleaded guilty to the criminal charge. This court permitted the defendant to withdraw his guilty plea and dismissed the charges.
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Meanwhile, at an NRA conference in 2023, Trump suggested there might be a link between the use of “genetically engineered” marijuana and mass shootings. In 2023, Trump said that the Food and Drug Administration would investigate a variety of unproven and controversial factors as possible causes for the continuing scourge in the US of mass shootings.
We need to investigate whether psychiatric medication, including genetically-engineered cannabis, or other drugs can cause psychotic episodes that result in gun violence.
Hunter Biden, son of then-President Joe Biden, was found guilty by a jury in federal court of buying and possessing an illegal firearm while consuming crack cocaine. Two Republican congressmen challenged the basis of that conviction, with one pointing out that there are “millions of marijuana users” who own guns but should not be prosecuted.
Medical marijuana patients, legislators, and advocacy organizations have all been confused by the situation. The NRA’s lobbying arm said recently that the court rulings on the cannabis and guns issue have “led to a confusing regulatory landscape” that have impacted Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights.
While some states passed laws to further restrict gun rights in relation to marijuana, others have attempted to maintain them. Recently a Pennsylvania lawmaker introduced a bill meant to remove state barriers to medical marijuana patients carrying firearms.
Colorado activists also attempted to qualify an initiative for November’s ballot that would have protected the Second Amendment rights of marijuana consumers in that state, but the campaign’s signature-gathering drive ultimately fell short.
As 2024 drew to a close, the ATF issued a warning to Kentucky residents that, if they choose to participate in the state’s medical marijuana program that’s set to launch imminently, they will be prohibited from buying or possessing firearms under federal law.
Since then, bipartisan state lawmakers have introduced legislation that would urge Kentucky’s representatives in Congress to amend federal law to clarify that users of medical marijuana may legally possess firearms, though no action has since been taken on that bill.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said in January that he supported the legislature’s effort to urge the state’s congressional delegation to call for federal reforms to protect the 2nd Amendment rights of medical marijuana patients, but the governor added that he’d like to see even more sweeping change on the federal level.
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