In United States v. Hemani, decided 9-0 on June 18, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government violated the Second Amendment when it prosecuted Ali Danial Hemani under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) — the statute barring firearm possession by an "unlawful user" of a controlled substance — on the strength of his marijuana use alone.
How the case began
Hemani is a U.S.-Pakistani dual citizen, born in Texas and long resident in the Dallas area. The government investigated him and his family over alleged terrorism ties and searched the family home in 2022. Hemani cooperated: he surrendered a firearm he kept in the house, pointed agents to marijuana on the property, and during a voluntary interview told them he used marijuana roughly every other day. No terrorism charge followed.
Instead, more than six months later, the government charged Hemani under § 922(g)(3) for possessing the gun while being an unlawful drug user — a prosecution that carried a potential sentence of up to fifteen years, resting entirely on his own admission of marijuana use.
What the Court held
Writing for seven justices, Justice Neil Gorsuch concluded that the government could not, consistent with the Second Amendment, automatically strip a person of the right to keep a firearm and prosecute him simply because he regularly uses a controlled substance, without any individualized showing that he is dangerous and without any pre-deprivation process. Gorsuch rejected the government\'s position that "anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous." Justices Alito and Kagan concurred in the judgment by separate opinion, making the result unanimous.
Importantly, the Court did not strike down § 922(g)(3) itself. It left open prosecutions backed by individualized proof of dangerousness, narrowing the statute as applied rather than voiding it.
Why it matters here
The National Political Prisoner Coalition follows Hemani because of how the prosecution arose: a years-long terrorism investigation that produced no terrorism case was converted, after the fact, into a felony gun charge grounded solely in a cooperative defendant\'s admission. The pattern — surveillance of a community member, followed by a pretextual prosecution when the original theory collapses — is one this organization documents across movements. The Supreme Court\'s rejection of the charge is a meaningful limit on that tactic, even as the underlying statute survives.
