Another Federal Judge Rules Against The Government’s Ban On Gun Ownership By Marijuana Consumers
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A federal judge in Rhode Island has ruled that a law banning gun ownership by people who use illegal substances is unconstitutional as applied to two defendants who challenged the prohibition in court.
The two defendants, David Worster and Alexzandria Carl, were charged with unlawfully possessing firearms while being regular users of marijuana. Worster was also charged with unlawfully owning a firearm while a felon, while Carl faced additional charges related to lying about her drug use on a gun purchase form.
Both argued that the Second Amendment’s protections on gun ownership meant the charges should be thrown out.
Judge John J. McConnell Jr. largely agreed.
In a decision earlier this month, McConnell dismissed the cannabis-related charges against both defendants, letting stand only the charge related to Worster’s status as a convicted felon.
Citing various recent federal appeals court decisions, McConnell wrote that the government failed to establish that the “sweeping” prohibition against gun ownership by marijuana users was grounded in historical precedent.
“The Court struggles to see an on-point historical analogue,” the ruling says, quoting a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit opinion saying that “the government offers no Founding-era law or practice of disarming ordinary citizens ‘even if their intoxication was routine.’”
A federal statute, § 922(g)(3), bars people from purchasing or possessing firearms if they’re an unlawful user of a controlled substance. But over the past year or so, a growing number of federal courts have imposed limits to that law, for example ruling that a person’s occasional drug use doesn’t justify a sweeping ban on gun ownership.
Although a drug user might be legally disarmed if intoxicated and dangerous to others, courts have ruled that categorically banning gun ownership is constitutional.
In the current case, “all the government alleged was that Mr. Worster had a medical marijuana card in his name, ‘a small marijuana grow with two mature marijuana plants, and a small back of dried marijuana’ at the time of the search,” McConnell’s ruling says. “That tells the Court little about his drug use, and, most importantly for the constitutional analysis, nothing suggests he was intoxicated at the time of arrest.”
In the case of Carl, the other defendant, banning her from owning a gun “based on habitual or occasional drug use,” the decision says, “imposes a far greater burden on her Second Amendment rights than our history and tradition of firearms regulation can support.”
The decision notes “a growing Circuit consensus that the Second Amendment still protects those charged under § 922(g),” pointing to appellate opinions out of the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal for the Fifth, Sixth and Third circuits.
While other district courts within the First Circuit, which includes Rhode Island, have ruled differently, McConnell acknowledged, “that approach cannot be squared with the clear constitutional text, recent Supreme Court precedent, and persuasive—and increasingly pervasive—Circuit reasoning.”
The recent ruling also threw out charges against Carl for making false statements about her drug use on federal firearms forms, with McConnell writing that the government failed meet its burden of establishing that the test was constitutional.
Despite his decision to throw out all the cannabis-related charges, McConnell rejected a separate Second Amendment challenge to the ban on felons owning firearms. That prohibition, he said, was better grounded in both historical precedent and public safety.
While he acknowledged the existence of First Circuit precedent saying that the law might be challenged as applied if “the underlying felony is ‘so tame and technical as to be insufficient to justify the ban,’” the judge ruled that “Worster’s criminal history, however, falls outside the scope of that exception.”
The judge noted that Worster’s record includes “multiple drug-related crimes, multiple firearm-related crimes, and two counts of possessing an explosive device”—activities the court called “far from ‘tame and technical.’”
The case, U.S. v. Worster and Carl, was first reported by Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly.
The ruling, dated February 5, comes as more federal courts question the legality of § 922(g)(3). Also earlier this month, for example, an Eighth Circuit panel dismissed a three-year prison sentence against a person convicted for possession of a firearm while being an active user of marijuana
Judges in that case ruled that government’s prohibition on gun ownership by drug users is justified only in certain circumstances—not always.
“Nothing in our tradition allows disarmament simply because [the defendant] belongs to a category of people, drug users, that Congress has categorically deemed dangerous,” their ruling said.
In another case earlier this year, a Fifth Circuit panel ruled that the firearms ban was unconstitutional as applied to least one defendant. That ruling came on the heels of a string of other judicial decisions casting doubt on the legality of the ban.
Separately, a federal judge in El Paso recently ruled that the government’s ongoing ban on gun ownership by habitual marijuana users is unconstitutional in the case of a defendant who earlier pleaded guilty to the criminal charge. The court allowed the man to withdraw the plea and ordered that the indictment against him be dismissed.
Another panel of judges, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, heard oral arguments in November in the government’s appeal of a district court ruling that deemed the gun ban unconstitutional.
Much of the panel’s discussion at oral argument in that case surrounded whether the underlying dispute was a facial challenge to the gun ban or an as-applied challenge. And, as in other cases, judges zeroed in on whether or not that defendant was actually under the influence of marijuana while in possession of a firearm.
In a separate federal court case, Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers recently made arguments that the ongoing firearm restriction for cannabis users is “analogous to laws disarming the intoxicated” and other historical laws “disarming many disparate groups that the government believed presented a danger with firearms.”
That brief was the latest response to a case filed by a Pennsylvania prosecutor who’s suing the federal government over its ban on gun ownership by cannabis users. It came two weeks after lawyers for the official, Warren County District Attorney Robert Greene, asked the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to allow the matter to proceed to trial.
In a number of the ongoing cases, DOJ has argued that the prohibition on gun ownership by marijuana users is also supported by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, U.S. v. Rahimi, that upheld the government’s ability to limit the Second Amendment rights of people with domestic violence restraining orders.
DOJ has made such arguments, for example, in favor of the firearms ban in a case in a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In that matter, a group of Florida medical cannabis patients contends that their Second Amendment rights are being violated because they cannot lawfully buy firearms so long as they are using cannabis as medicine, despite acting in compliance with state law.
DOJ under President Joe Biden consistently argued that medical marijuana patients who possess firearms “endanger public safety,” “pose a greater risk of suicide” and are more likely to commit crimes “to fund their drug habit.”
It remains unclear how the Trump administration will approach the cases. At a NRA conference in 2023, Trump suggested there might be a link between the use of “genetically engineered” marijuana and mass shootings. He listed a number of controversial and unproven factors that he said at the time he would direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate as possibly causing the ongoing scourge of mass shooting afflicting the country.
“We have to look at whether common psychiatric drugs, as well as genetically engineered cannabis and other narcotics, are causing psychotic breaks” that lead to gun violence, he said.
DOJ has claimed in multiple federal cases over the past several years that the statute banning cannabis consumers from owning or possessing guns is constitutional because it’s consistent with the nation’s history of disarming “dangerous” individuals.
In 2023, for example, the Justice Department told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that historical precedent “comfortably” supports the restriction. Cannabis consumers with guns pose a unique danger to society, the Biden administration claimed, in part because they’re “unlikely” to store their weapon properly.
Last year, Biden’s son Hunter was convicted by a federal jury of violating statute by buying and possessing a gun while an active user of crack cocaine. Two Republican congressmen challenged the basis of that conviction, with one pointing out that there are “millions of marijuana users” who own guns but should not be prosecuted.
The situation has caused confusion among medical marijuana patients, state lawmakers and advocacy groups, among others. The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) lobbying arm said recently that the court rulings on the cannabis and guns issue have “led to a confusing regulatory landscape” that have impacted Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
“Marijuana use is no longer limited to the domain of indigenous religious customs or youth-oriented counterculture and now includes a wide variety of people who use it for medicinal or recreational reasons,” said the advocacy group, which does not have an official stance on cannabis policy generally. “Many of these individuals are otherwise law-abiding and productive members of their communities and want to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.”
Meanwhile, some states have passed their own laws either further restricting or attempting to preserve gun rights as they relate to marijuana. Recently, for example, a Pennsylvania lawmaker introduced a bill meant to remove state barriers to medical marijuana patients carrying firearms.
Colorado activists also attempted to qualify an initiative for November’s ballot that would have protected the Second Amendment rights of marijuana consumers in that state, but the campaign’s signature-gathering drive ultimately fell short.
As 2024 drew to a close, the ATF issued a warning to Kentucky residents that, if they choose to participate in the state’s medical marijuana program that’s set to launch imminently, they will be prohibited from buying or possessing firearms under federal law.
The official said that while people who already own firearms aren’t “expected to” turn them over if they become state-legal cannabis patients, those who “wish to follow federal law and not be in violation of it” must “make the decision to divest themselves of those firearms.”
Since then, bipartisan state lawmakers have introduced legislation that would urge Kentucky’s representatives in Congress to amend federal law to clarify that users of medical marijuana may legally possess firearms.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said last month that he supports the legislature’s effort to urge the state’s congressional delegation to call for federal reforms to protect the Second Amendment rights of medical marijuana patients, but the governor added that he’d like to see even more sweeping change on the federal level.
“I think the right way to deal with that is not just to focus on that issue, but to change the schedule of marijuana,” Beshear said at a press conference. “What we need to change is the overall marijuana policy by the federal government.”
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