The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the federal ban on gun possession by people who use illegal drugs is unconstitutional.

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Supreme Court will review gun law that was used to convict Hunter Biden
The case is a Second Amendment challenge to a law banning gun possession by people who use illegal drugs.

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether the federal ban on gun possession by people who use illegal drugs is unconstitutional. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

By JOSH GERSTEIN
10/20/2025 11:49 AM EDT

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide the constitutionality of a longstanding federal law banning possession of guns by anyone who illegally uses or is addicted to drugs.

It’s the same law that Hunter Biden was convicted of violating last year. He was pardoned by his father, former President Joe Biden, before he was sentenced.

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The justices will consider whether the law violates the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms. They announced Monday that they will take up the case of Ali Hemani, a Texas man charged with illegal possession of a Glock pistol after the FBI found the gun along with small quantities of marijuana and cocaine at his home during a court-ordered search in 2022.

The case is another chance for the high court to clear up confusion and uncertainty created by the justices’ groundbreaking 2022 ruling striking down restrictive gun laws in New York. That ruling, known as New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, told judges assessing the constitutionality of gun regulations to look for analogues from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Lower courts have struggled with that task, with judges differing about whether past practices were sufficiently close to justify modern regulations.

While the Trump administration has broadly championed the rights of gun owners, it asked the justices to reinstate the criminal case against Hemani after the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of his prosecution. Although Hemani admitted to FBI agents that he regularly used pot, the government had no evidence he was intoxicated at the time of the search or while he had the firearm.

Under that appeals court’s strict interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling, the federal statute banning possession of guns by drug users can only be applied to situations where the defendant had the weapon while actively under the influence of drugs. The 5th Circuit cited historical examples of laws against gun possession while intoxicated but said a more categorical ban wasn’t supported by American history.

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Last June, Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury in Delaware under the same statute for possessing a pistol while he was addicted to cocaine. He unsuccessfully challenged the constitutionality of the statute in advance of trial, and he was expected to renew the challenge on appeal. But last December, Joe Biden gave his son a broad pardon that wiped out his convictions on that charge and two related false-statement charges. It also ended a tax-related criminal case in which Hunter Biden had pleaded guilty.

The Trump Justice Department is asking the high court to uphold the broad sweep of the law so that people who regularly use drugs or are addicted to them are prohibited from possessing firearms without regard to their state of intoxication at the time.

“This restriction provides a modest, modern analogue of much harsher founding-era restrictions on habitual drunkards, and so it stands solidly within our Nation’s history and tradition of regulation,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in June.

Last year, the Supreme Court appeared to narrow Bruen substantially when the justices upheld a federal ban on gun possession by people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders. That decision emphasized that modern gun regulations could pass muster even if they lacked a precise historical precursor.

Earlier this month, the justices announced that they will review another case grappling with the import of the 2022 ruling: a disp