Last Updated: 06/19/2026
United States v. Hemani and what it means for trans gun rights.
Since this website began, our state statute guides have included a disclaimer regarding marijuana use and firearms ownership. The reality we lived under, which automatically criminalized gun possession for marijuana users, exposing them to felony charges and lifetime disarmament, had serious real-world consequences for many members of our community.
That status quo ended Thursday when the Supreme Court issued its decision in United States v. Hemani.
Writing for seven justices, Justice Gorsuch was explicit: the government cannot strip Second Amendment rights from an entire category of people without historical justification and individualized evidence of danger. It tried. The Court said no.
And affording the government that kind of “broad power to designate any group as dangerous and thereby disqualify its members from having a gun” would risk allowing it to “quickly swallow” the Second Amendment.
— Justice Neil Gorsuch, United States v. Hemani (2026)
We want to zero in on the most important part of that statement, which cannot be ignored. Any group.
This ruling has huge implications for the trans community. Not only are we now free to use marijuana responsibly as firearms owners without fear of malicious prosecution, but we have been handed perhaps the strongest argument we could have hoped for against any encroachment on trans firearms rights.
It’s worth noting that Neil Gorsuch quoted Amy Coney Barrett to give us this win. The same Amy Coney Barrett who, in her Skrmetti concurrence last year, argued that transgender people lack the legal protections afforded to suspect classes, in part because she saw insufficient evidence of systematic government discrimination against them.
Unintentionally, the precedent she and Gorsuch just set has become one of the most powerful tools trans firearm rights could have asked for.
Hemani protects trans marijuana users today, but the implications of this decision are unmistakable. The logic applied in Hemani would have to protect trans firearms rights.
Why the Court said no to the Trump administration.
In 2022, federal agents searched the home of Ali Hemani, a Texas-born dual US and Pakistani citizen living in the Dallas area, as part of a terrorism investigation. Hemani was cooperative throughout. He surrendered a firearm, consented to an interview, and told agents he used marijuana about every other day.
No terrorism charges followed.
More than six months later, the government charged Hemani with a single count: possessing a firearm while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3). For that alone, he faced up to 15 years in federal prison and lifetime disarmament.
This illustrated a fear legal marijuana users who owned firearms have held for years. Regardless of the pretext, possession of marijuana and firearms opened you up to felony charges. The administration looked for anything to throw at Ali Hemani, and this was the best they could do.
Hemani challenged the charge on Second Amendment grounds. The district court agreed with him. So did the Fifth Circuit. Today, so did the Supreme Court.
Section 922(g)(3) is the provision of the federal Gun Control Act that prohibits anyone who is an unlawful user of a controlled substance from possessing a firearm. To defend §922(g)(3), the government needed to show the law was consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Their argument: habitual drunkard laws.
Historically, they said, America restricted the rights of people who regularly used intoxicants. Marijuana users are people who regularly use intoxicants. Therefore, the tradition exists.
The Court wasn’t convinced. The historical record shows that a habitual drunkard wasn’t simply someone who drank regularly. They were someone so incapacitated by alcohol that they could no longer manage their own affairs. Practically non-functional. The law didn’t target people who had a few drinks. It targeted people who had lost control entirely.
By contrast, §922(g)(3) as the government applied it targeted anyone who regularly used any controlled substance in any amount, with no requirement to show that person was dangerous, impaired, or a threat to anyone.
Ali Hemani used marijuana every other day. The government didn’t claim he was dangerous. They didn’t claim he’d ever misused his firearm. They didn’t claim his drug use affected his ability to function. They just claimed he used marijuana, and that was enough.
The Court also noted that historical laws, even the most restrictive ones targeting disfavored groups, required some form of process before a person lost their rights. A hearing. A proceeding. Something.
Section 922(g)(3) stripped rights automatically, the moment someone picked up a joint.
That, the Court held, is not how the Second Amendment works.
Effective immediately.
As of today, our guidance for trans marijuana users has changed. This ruling directly affects the intersection of marijuana use and firearms ownership, and we want to be clear about what it does and does not mean.
What changed after Hemani
- Regular marijuana users who own firearms are no longer automatically exposed to federal prosecution under §922(g)(3) solely because of their drug use.
- The Supreme Court held that the government cannot categorically disarm a class of people without individualized evidence of danger and a historical basis for doing so.
- Convictions under §922(g)(3) were always rare, but the threat existed and could be used selectively. Hemani removes that automatic exposure.
What did not change
- Marijuana remains illegal under federal law regardless of this ruling.
- State law varies (See your state guide for details).
- The government may still prosecute marijuana users under §922(g)(3) with individualized proof that a specific person’s drug use makes them dangerous. The categorical automatic ban is what fell, not the statute entirely.
- Dealer discretion is unaffected. A dealer may still decline a sale for their own reasons.
- This ruling does not affect the 4473 proposed rule changes (Explained below).
- What constitutes addiction under the law remains unsettled. The Court did not address §922(g)(3)’s addict provision, and case law defining the threshold between regular use and addiction is not yet established. Heavy or daily users should be aware this question is unresolved.
What Hemani means for the 4473 fight.
Not familiar with the proposed ATF Form 4473 changes? Our full guide covers what the rule proposes, what it doesn’t say, and what it means for trans gun buyers. Read it here before continuing.
The ruling in Hemani held that the government cannot automatically disarm a categorical group without individualized evidence of danger and historical grounding. The recently proposed changes to ATF Form 4473 do exactly that by using an unworkable sex definition in an attempt to chill the Second Amendment rights of trans Americans.
The vagueness of the proposed rule may not be accidental. As we noted in our previous guide, the proposed changes contain no ID matching requirement, no enforcement mechanism at the counter, and no specified consequences for a mismatch. We argued then that uncertainty was the weapon.
Hemani suggests an additional explanation. An explicit rule categorically denying firearms purchases to trans people would walk directly into the constitutional problem the Court just identified. The administration may have kept the rule vague precisely because they knew an explicit ban could not survive scrutiny.
They could not write the rule they wanted. Hemani is what they were afraid of, and even their proposed rule may run afoul of it.
Following the logic of Hemani, any attempt to categorically disarm trans people should face the same constitutional fate.
Per Bruen, any regulation burdening Second Amendment rights needs a historical analogue matching in purpose and operation. There is no historical tradition of disarming people based on gender identity or a document mismatch.
The government would have to produce one. It cannot.
The ruling in Hemani stressed that even where historical analogues existed, they required some proceeding before rights were lost. An automatic denial of rights without due process was central to why §922(g)(3) failed constitutional scrutiny.
An automatic denial of sale based on an ID mismatch, as the proposed Form 4473 changes could enable, with no process whatsoever, fails this standard even more dramatically.
The implications of this particular doctrine extend beyond the proposed ATF form changes. We’ve previously reported on attempts to criminalize the possession of firearms-related 3D printing files. The reasoning in Hemani poses a problem for these laws.
Possession of a digital file is a First Amendment right. If the government cannot strip Second Amendment rights automatically and without process, laws which criminalize that possession without any individualized determination or proceeding face the same constitutional problem.
Returning to the 4473 specifically, the problem runs even deeper.
The current list of prohibited persons, which you’ve seen mentioned throughout our guides, reflects categories with historical and individual bases for disarmament. Trans identity has no such basis. After Hemani, constructing one faces enormous constitutional resistance. Barrett’s own words in Skrmetti explain why:
Because the litigants assumed that evidence of private discrimination could suffice for the suspect-class inquiry, they did not thoroughly discuss whether transgender individuals have suffered a history of de jure discrimination as a class. And because the group of transgender individuals is an insufficiently discrete and insular minority, the question is largely academic. In future cases, however, I would not recognize a new suspect class absent a demonstrated history of de jure discrimination.
— Justice Amy Coney Barrett, concurring, United States v. Skrmetti (2025)
In plain terms, Barrett is saying that to earn heightened legal protection as a group, transgender people would need to demonstrate a history of discrimination written into law. She found that history absent. That is precisely the same history the government would need to produce to justify categorical disarmament under Hemani. It cannot.
In her attempt to deny trans rights, Amy Coney Barrett has created a precedent which will defend them.
While no court has yet applied this logic to the 4473 changes, the implications are clear. Those challenges are coming, and this decision has given them a map to follow which did not previously exist.
They built this. We’ll win with it.
Today the Court handed our community two wins. No longer can marijuana use be used as a weapon against those of us who exercise our Second Amendment rights to self-defense, and we now have solid constitutional architecture to challenge the ATF’s proposed anti-trans changes.
As always with this Court, nothing can be certain. No one predicted this case coming down 9-0. The conservative justices have ignored precedent, abandoned interpretive consistency, and invented new interpretations of standing out of thin air. They cannot be trusted.
However, this was a gift to our particular struggle, and it’s one we will accept and utilize happily.
The comment period on the proposed 4473 changes closes August 4. If you haven’t already, read our guide to the comment process before making a decision to weigh in.
We have been documenting the erosion of trans firearms rights since this site began. Today we get to document something different.
Hemani didn’t happen by accident. Facing an unjust prosecution, Ali Hemani fought back and won.
We can do the same. We will do the same.
We keep us safe.