The federal law barring illegal drug users from owning firearms has been much in the news lately. It has also been considered by several courts over the past few months, with widely varying rulings on the matter.
A recent appeals court ruling is unlikely to bring much clarity to the situation. On August 20, a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a group of Florida residents who use medical marijuana had plausibly alleged that the law as applied to them violates their right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.
In the case Florida Commissioner of Agriculture v. U.S., the ruling took issue with the First Amended Complaint (FAC), which didn’t include anything indicating medical marijuana use made any of the individual plaintiffs a threat.
“Notably, the FAC does not contain any allegations regarding the frequency of Cooper’s and Hansell’s medicinal marijuana use or the amount of marijuana they consume at any given time,” the ruling stated. “Nor does it contain any allegations related to what marijuana-related side effects, if any, Cooper and Hansell experience. The FAC does not indicate whether they have lost any level of control over their use of marijuana, or whether marijuana impairs the regulation of their behavior when they are not using. Indeed, all the FAC alleges regarding their current marijuana use is that they ‘participate in the state medical marijuana program’ because of the ‘benefits [they] obtain from such medical use’ as well as their reliance on not being criminally prosecuted for their use.
“In short, nothing in the FAC indicates that Cooper or Hansell has committed any felony or been convicted of any crime (felony or misdemeanor), let alone that their medical marijuana use makes them dangerous.”
The plaintiffs in the case argued that keeping guns from users of medical marijuana in states that have authorized its use is not consistent with that historical tradition of firearms regulation—the second standard set down in 2022 under the new Bruen doctrine. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), however, argued that barring marijuana users from having guns was consistent with a long-standing tradition of disarming convicted felons or dangerous individuals.
Concerning that argument, the 11th Circuit judges sided with the plaintiffs.
“Accordingly, the Federal Government has failed, at the motion to dismiss stage, to establish that disarming Appellants is consistent with this Nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation,” the ruling stated.
The court ruling came just two weeks after the DOJ solicitor general urged the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a marijuana/gun ownership case in an upcoming session. Teen Marijuana Use Has Declined In Washington Since Legalization
At the time, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the case “presents an important Second Amendment issue that affects hundreds of prosecutions every year: whether the government may disarm individuals who habitually use unlawful drugs but are not necessarily under the influence while possessing a firearm.”
If the court takes up such a case, the DOJ will continue to argue that the ban on marijuana users is constitutional, despite several lower courts ruling otherwise.
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