WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court unanimously rejected the prosecution of a Texas man for purchasing a firearm while consuming marijuana Thursday, weakening a federal law used to convict former first son Hunter Biden.
In a unanimous ruling written by Republican-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch, the high court agreed that the prosecution of Ali Danial Hemani violated his Second Amendment rights.
The court did not address the question of whether addicts who were currently intoxicated could purchase a firearm or whether any person under the influence of marijuana could be deemed too dangerous to posses a gun.
The justices also didn’t outright strike down the law, which was used to prosecute the younger Biden for purchasing a firearm while addicted to cocaine.
“We appreciate that drugs and guns can sometimes make for a dangerous mix,” Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion.
“…[T]he government cannot carry the burden it has set for itself. We decide cases ‘based on the historical record,’” he added. “And the habitual drunkard laws on which the government relies here differ dramatically from [the statute in question’s] unlawful user provision on every single metric the government invites us to consider.”
Gorsuch ripped into prosecutors for not analyzing whether Hemani’s use of marijuana made him unsuitable to go about armed.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both penned concurring opinions, with the latter joined by liberal Justice Elena Kagan. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed to the court by then-President Joe Biden, also penned a concurrence backed by fellow liberal Sonia Sotomayor.