Politics
Federal Judge In Texas Rules That Ban On Gun Ownership By Marijuana User Is Unconstitutional As Applied
A federal judge in El Paso has ruled that the U.S. 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. The court this week allowed the man to withdraw the plea and ordered that the indictment against him be dismissed.
The new ruling stops short of declaring that the law against firearm ownership by cannabis users—18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3)—is itself unconstitutional. As applied to the defendant in the case, however, it says that government lawyers failed to demonstrate that the restriction aligns with the nation’s history of regulating gun ownership, noting that that they did “nothing in the way of proving that Defendant was intoxicated by marijuana at the time of this incident.”
David Briones, a senior U.S. District Court judge for the Western District of Texas, also acknowledged in the decision that the legal landscape around marijuana and the Second Amendment had evolved since the court first accepted the guilty plea. In the interim, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas, ruled that while “some limits on a presently intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon” may be constitutional, “disarming a sober person based on past substance usage” is not.
That case, U.S. v. Daniels, was set to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year but was among a number of firearms-related cases remanded back to lower courts following a separate Supreme Court decision about firearms and domestic violence.
“In the past two years alone,” Briones, a Clinton appointee, wrote in the new ruling, “the Fifth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court have heard and considered the following cases: Daniels, Rahimi, and Bruen. These cases have changed the law when it comes to the Second Amendment, and in the case of Daniels, have challenged the constitutionality of the very statute under which Defendant is charged.”
In the case, the El Paso Police Department responded to a 2021 call at the defendant’s home, entered the house and found two bags of marijuana. A search also found multiple guns inside the home. The defendant allegedly told officers that he’d used marijuana regularly for years and understood it was illegal to have both a medical marijuana card and a gun.
After the guilty plea, the defendant appealed his case to the Fifth Circuit, which later remanded it back to the district court in light of the recent precedent-setting opinions.
“This court now has a fuller picture of the Second Amendment jurisprudence as it stands today,” the order says, “and has reconsidered its position.”
A Texas federal judge ruled today that the federal ban on gun+drug possession is unconstitutional as applied to a defendant who was not shown to be "intoxicated by marijuana at the time of [the] incident, or at the time he was arrested." https://t.co/vpIKrTwlQO pic.twitter.com/7Unsf7Ccfx
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) December 30, 2024
In response to the challenge to the firearm restriction’s constitutionality, Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers argued that the defendant wasn’t part of “the people” referred to in the Second Amendment, “because illegal drug users and addicts are, by definition, not ‘law-abiding’ citizens covered by the amendment’s text.”
But the court disagreed, noting that the Daniels opinion points to five mentions of “the people” in the Bill of Rights and says that “In each place, it refers to all members of our political community, not a special group of upright citizens.”
“Defendant is part of ‘the people’ whose conduct is covered and protected by the Second Amendment,” the ruling concludes. “Because he is part of ‘the people,’ the Government had the burden to identify a historical analogue similar enough to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) to show that individuals like Defendant were disarmed at the time of the Founding. The Government failed to meet its burden. Therefore, the Court finds that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) is unconstitutional as applied to Defendant.”
One issue that Briones emphasized in his ruling is the lack of evidence that the defendant was actually under the influence of marijuana.
“Here, while the Government goes to great lengths to disclose that Defendant ‘admitted being a daily user of marihuana since age 14’ and that Defendant ‘just like[d] good weed,'” the order says, “it does nothing in the way of proving that Defendant was intoxicated by marijuana at the time of this incident, or at the time he was arrested.”
“In line with the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning in Connelly,” it adds pointing to another recent opinion, “this Court agrees that ‘based on habitual or occasional drug use § 922(g)(3) imposes a far greater burden on [Defendant’s] Second Amendment rights than our history and tradition of firearms regulation can support.'”
In addition to the guilty plea being withdrawn, the indictment dismissed and the federal firearm restriction being deemed unconstitutional as applied, the ruling also ordered that the defendant be released from any pretrial or bond conditions.
Because it is a district court decision, the new ruling does not create any precedent for other courts to follow. Nevertheless, it’s the most recent indication of where judges stand as higher courts adjust their interpretations of federal firearm law.
Separately, a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit heard oral arguments in November in the government’s appeal of a district court ruling that deemed the gun ban unconstitutional.
Much of the panel’s discussion at oral argument in that case surrounded whether the underlying dispute was a facial challenge to the gun ban or an as-applied challenge. Judges also zeroed in on whether or not that defendant was actually under the influence of marijuana while in possession of a firearm.
Judges did not indicate during oral argument how they plan to rule on that dispute, instead taking the matter under submission.
In a separate federal court case, DOJ lawyers recently made arguments that the ongoing firearm restriction for cannabis users is “analogous to laws disarming the intoxicated” and other historical laws “disarming many disparate groups that the government believed presented a danger with firearms.”
That brief was the latest response to a case filed by a Pennsylvania prosecutor suing the federal government over its ban on gun ownership by cannabis users. It came two weeks after lawyers for the official, Warren County District Attorney Robert Greene, asked the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to allow the matter to proceed to trial.
In the plaintiffs’ earlier brief, attorneys for Greene and others argued that the firearm prohibition for cannabis users is distinct from other laws prohibiting gun ownership by potentially dangerous individuals, noting that the other restrictions “only permitted the deprivation of one’s Second Amendment rights after a hearing, providing for due process, and then, only temporarily.”
While the government has framed its marijuana gun ban as similarly temporary, plaintiffs said that in practice the prohibition is much broader.
“While the Government disingenuously contends throughout its brief that the challenged regulations only ‘impose a temporary prohibition on firearms possession and receipt during the time period that a person is actively engaged in unlawful drug use,’” the plaintiffs’ last brief said, “the truth of the matter, which the Government elects not to disclose to this Court, is that…an unlawful user includes those ‘even though the substance is not being used at the precise time the person seeks to acquire a firearm or receives or possesses a firearm.’”
Lawyers in a separate federal appeals court case also faced off over when the government may lawfully disarm someone for using marijuana, with DOJ arguing in that dispute that a person’s recent use of the drug is indeed sufficient to establish that they’re in violation of the law and should not legally be able to possess a gun.
In a number of the ongoing cases, DOJ has argued that the prohibition on gun ownership by marijuana users is also supported by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, U.S. v. Rahimi, that upheld the government’s ability to limit the Second Amendment rights of people with domestic violence restraining orders.
DOJ has made such arguments, for example, in favor of the firearms ban in a case in a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In that matter, a group of Florida medical cannabis patients contends that their Second Amendment rights are being violated because they cannot lawfully buy firearms so long as they are using cannabis as medicine, despite acting in compliance with state law.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, argues that medical marijuana patients who possess firearms “endanger public safety,” “pose a greater risk of suicide” and are more likely to commit crimes “to fund their drug habit.”
The Justice Department has claimed in multiple federal cases over the past several years that the statute banning cannabis consumers from owning or possessing guns is constitutional because it’s consistent with the nation’s history of disarming “dangerous” individuals.
In 2023, for example, the Justice Department told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that historical precedent “comfortably” supports the restriction. Cannabis consumers with guns pose a unique danger to society, the Biden administration claimed, in part because they’re “unlikely” to store their weapon properly.
Last year, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was convicted by a federal jury of violating statute by buying and possessing a gun while an active user of 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.
Meanwhile, some states have passed their own laws either further restricting or attempting to preserve gun rights as they relate to marijuana. Recently, for example, 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, however, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (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.
The official said that while people who already own firearms aren’t “expected to” turn them over if they become state-legal cannabis patients, those who “wish to follow federal law and not be in violation of it” must “make the decision to divest themselves of those firearms.”
