What Happened
The Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision striking down the prosecution of marijuana users under federal law that made it illegal for "unlawful users" of controlled substances to possess firearms. The case centered on 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3), which for decades has been used to convict people of violating federal gun laws if they were also marijuana users.
All nine justices—from Sotomayor to Thomas to Alito—agreed that this law, as applied to marijuana users, violates the Second Amendment.
Las Vegas Sun reports that the Court noted the obvious contradiction: using marijuana every other day isn't a sufficient reason for the government to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to bear arms. Which, when you think about it, is not a particularly high bar to clear—but apparently it needed a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to do it.
Why This Matters
The ruling exposes a perfect storm of legal incompetence: federal law criminalized gun ownership for drug users, state law was increasingly legalizing marijuana, and nobody in the middle seemed interested in resolving the collision between these two realities.
For years, people in states where marijuana was legal could still be federally prosecuted for owning guns if they also used marijuana. Not because they'd committed any crime in their state. Not because they were violent or dangerous. Just because the federal government decided that legal marijuana users didn't deserve Second Amendment rights.
The Dumb Part
The dumb part is that this required Supreme Court intervention. Congress could have fixed this years ago. Prosecutors could have declined these cases. But instead, the federal government kept charging people, judges kept convicting them, and it took a 9-0 Supreme Court decision to point out that the law was nonsensical.
Also notable: this court barely agrees on anything. The fact that all nine justices agreed on this suggests the original law was not just wrong, but obviously, embarrassingly wrong.
What Comes Next
Prosecutions under this law will presumably stop. People convicted under it may have grounds for appeals or sentence reductions. Congress could theoretically write a narrower version of the law if they wanted to, but it's unclear whether they will—or if they should.
The larger issue remains: federal and state drug laws are on a collision course with constitutional rights, and the federal government has been playing both sides of that collision for years.
Sources
Las Vegas Sun: An absurd gun case unified the Supreme Court
Los Angeles Times: Gun owners may carry a weapon into stores, Supreme Court rules
Virginia Lawyers Weekly: SCOTUS+ News: Justices uphold gun rights of marijuana users