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Hello, this is Jeff Barnum reading the Supreme Court syllabus in United States vs. Hamani, surcharge to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Argued March 2, 2026, decided June 18, 2026. Ali Hamani is a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan who was born in Texas. He has spent most of his life in the Dallas area with his parents and working a stable job. Suspecting Mr. Hamani and his family members of terrorism-related activities, the government conducted a search of the family home in 2022. Throughout the process, Mr. Hamani proved cooperative. He surrendered a gun he kept in the house, pointed agents to some marijuana on the property, and consented to an interview during which he told law enforcement agents that he used marijuana about every other day. More than six months after the search, and relying solely on Mr. Hamani's admitted use of marijuana, the government prosecuted Mr. Hamani under 18 United States Code, Section 922, G3, for knowingly possessing a gun in his home while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance.

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Hamani moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the government's effort to enforce 922 G3 against him violated the Second Amendment. The district court granted the motion, and after an unsuccessful appeal to the Fifth Circuit, the government asked this court to review the case. Held, the government's prosecution of Mr. Hamani under Section 922G3's unlawful user provision is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment protects the right of all Americans to keep and bear firearms for self-defense, though like most individual rights, it has its limits. To determine when the government infringes the Second Amendment, the court begins by asking whether the amendment's terms cover the conduct in question. If so, the Constitution presumptively protects it. To overcome that presumption, the government bears the burden of showing its regulatory effects are consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. The government need not point to a historical twin or precise historical precursors. Instead, the appropriate analysis involves considering whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition. And the government may reason by analogy, showing that its contemporary regulation is relevantly similar to ones well established in the nation's history. Two features play a central role in determining whether a modern law is relevantly similar to historical ones, the why and the how. The more closely a contemporary law mirrors a well-established historical analog in purpose and operation, the more likely it is to be upheld. The government accepts this framework and agrees that Section 922G3's unlawful user provision burdens conduct presumptively protected by the Second Amendment because the statute bans a class of people, including Mr. Hamani, from possessing essentially any firearm for any purpose. The government construes Section 922G3 to automatically ban an individual from possessing a gun from the moment he becomes an unlawful user of any controlled substance, and remains in effect until he ceases being one, regardless of what controlled substance an individual uses, in what amounts, whether his drug use has ever made him a danger to himself or others, why he keeps a gun, or how safely he does so. The government analogizes its construction of 922 G3 to what it calls habitual drunkard laws, which it submits enjoy deep roots in the country's history and are relevantly similar to the regulation it wishes to enforce. These habitual drunkard laws fall into three general categories: vagrancy laws that allowed habitual drunkards to be confined in workhouses or jailed, civil commitment statutes that allowed courts to appoint guardians for habitual drunkards or authorize their commitment to asylums, and surety laws under which judicial officers could compel habitual drunkers to post surety bonds to ensure their good behavior. The government's analogy fails on every metric it invites the court to consider. Taken cumulatively, these problems prove fatal to the government's prosecution of Mr. Hamani. The government's claim that historical laws targeted habitual drunkards for the same reason 922G3 targets unlawful users because they regularly use intoxicants is difficult to square with the historical record. Around the time of the founding and for decades following it, a habitual drunkard was generally someone who, for any considerable part of his time, was intoxicated to such a degree as to deprive him of his ordinary reasoning faculties. A regular or even frequent drinker did not usually fit the bill. Many statutes define the term to require that someone drink to such excess that he was incapable of conducting his own affairs, mentally incompetent, or had lost the power of self-control. Given the culture of copious drinking in early America, historical laws targeted habitual drunkards not merely because they regularly used intoxicants, but because their drinking rendered them practically incapacitated and incapable of managing their affairs. By contrast, on the government's account, Section 922G3 automatically disarms anyone who regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance for anything other than its prescribed purpose, without requiring a showing that a particular individual is regularly incapacitated, incapable of conducting his affairs, or a threat to himself or others. The government's claim that Section 922 G3 disarms unlawful drug users to protect the public from unusually dangerous individuals who will commit violent crimes, and that historical laws share a similar purpose, misapprehends the purposes animating those historical analogues. Vagrancy laws usually targeted those who did not meet the societal expectation of work, and sought to promote productivity and suppress various vices, not to protect the public from a category of unusually dangerous persons. Civil commitment laws, by their own terms, generally did not seek to protect the public from violence so much as to protect habitual drunkards from themselves, and to protect their families from financial devastation. And the surety of good behavior laws the government invokes did not normally require showing that an individual posed a threat of violence. Instead, they sought to protect the community from scandals against good morals. The way habitual drunkard statutes worked in the past differs significantly from how Section 922 G3's unlawful user provision works today. The historical laws the government identifies usually provided some form of process before an individual lost any of his liberties, even temporarily. A vagrant could be sent to a workhouse or jail, generally only upon a conviction. A habitual drunkard could be assigned a guardian or committed to an asylum, usually only after proceedings before something like a probate court. And surety statutes typically required a proceeding before a justice of the peace or comparable officer before a bond could be ordered. By contrast, on the government's account, Section 922G3 automatically divests an individual of his constitutional right to bear arms the moment he becomes an unlawful user and until he ends his drug use, all without any pre-deprivation process. There are reasons to doubt that the government has established Section 922G3 even serves a purpose the government claims, of disarming categorically violent and unusually dangerous persons. Section 922G3's Reliance on the Controlled Substances Act, a statute adopted to protect the health and general welfare of the American people, and under which drugs can be added to schedules for reasons having little or nothing to do with their potential to induce violence, makes it far from obvious that 18 United States Code Section 922G3 confines its reach to those who are categorically and unusually dangerous. Additionally, the government's own regulatory actions undercut its position. The Department of Justice has directed federal prosecutors to curtail enforcement actions against marijuana users. Most states have legalized marijuana use to some degree, and the government recently moved some marijuana products from Schedule 1 to Schedule III. Affording the government 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. The court's decision is narrow. It does not address efforts to ban addicts or those presently intoxicated for possessing a firearm. Other prophylactic laws that Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms, Section 922G1's provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies, or whether the government could bring a prosecution under Section 922G3, accompanied by individualized proof that the defendant's drug use renders him a danger to himself or others, or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous. Affirmed. Justice Gorsuch delivered the opinion of the court in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson joined. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion. Justice Jackson filed a concurring opinion in which Justice Sotomayor joined. Justice Alito filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in which Justice Kagan joined. Thank you for listening. 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