The Supreme Court barred the federal government from prosecuting a Texas man and marijuana user for violating a law that makes it a crime for illegal drug users to possess a firearm.

The unanimous ruling sided with challenger Ali Danial Hemani that the government's application of the law violated his rights to possess a firearm under the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. 

Hemani was charged under the Gun Control Act of 1968, a law that criminalizes any 'unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance' from having a gun. It is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. 

Notably, it is also the same law feds used to bring criminal charges against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, just two years earlier.

A jury convicted Hunter Biden in June 2024 on three counts stemming from violations of the same statute - including two counts of making a false statement about his drug use while purchasing a gun in 2018, and one count of possessing a firearm while unlawfully using drugs.

Hemani, the challenger in the Supreme Court case, was found to be in possession of a gun when his house was raided in 2022, and acknowledged to authorities that he used marijuana 'about every other day.'

'We appreciate that drugs and guns can sometimes make for a dangerous mix,' Justice Neil Gorsuch said Thursday, writing for the Supreme Court majority.

But in this case, Gorsuch said, the government seeking to 'automatically strip Hemani of his Second Amendment right to possess a firearm' and imprison him for more than a decade, based only on the showing that Hemani 'regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance.'

The government maintained it did not need to prove an occasional illegal drug user 'is regularly incapacitated.' 

Gorsuch responded by noting that, under this line of thinking, the government could also prosecute 'a husband who regularly takes his wife’s prescription Ambien to sleep,' and 'a college student who routinely uses a friend’s Adderall to cram for exams.’

Gorsuch stressed that the ruling is narrow. 

The court, he said, does not, 'question that sometimes an individual’s unlawful use of marijuana (or any other controlled substance) may render him a danger to others,' he said.

The high court did 'not even address' whether the government could prosecute an individual if it had proof the individual's drug use 'renders him a danger to himself or others, Gorsuch added, further emphasizing the limitations of the ruling.

Still, the Supreme Court's unanimous decision is likely to decrease prosecutions, particularly around casual drug users found in possession of firearms. 

For Hunter Biden, this particular legal ship has long since sailed.

Though the charges against him carried a maximum statutory penalty of up to 25 years in prison, he was ultimately pardoned by his father, then-President Joe Biden, during his final weeks in office in December 2024, before the sentencing phase of his trial could begin.