Legal News Roundup

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. And yes, live parade ceremony coverage starting at 11.45.
I think we will get to hear Alicia Keys sing. Which song did they sing? New York State of Mind, one of those.
And we'll hear the mayor present. We'll hear the Knicks who are gonna speak speak. So that parade coverage starts in about 25 minutes. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is now issuing decisions on major cases as we head toward the end of June and into the first days of July as each year. And we've recruited some of our most diligent legal eagles to stand by and watch out for those cases, which are released mostly on Thursdays and mostly at 10 a.m. And some of the major cases that we're watching include birthright citizenship, temporary protected status, transgender athletes and mail-in ballots. There are also two major cases concerning the Second Amendment, and the Supreme Court did issue a ruling on one of those cases this morning. It's called United States vs. Himani. The court addressed whether denying gun ownership rights based solely on recreational marijuana use violates the Second Amendment. So joining us now to discuss how the court came down on this, what legal precedent it might set, and to preview at least the other Second Amendment case in front of the justices is Kate Shaw, professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, co-host of the Supreme Court Podcast, Strict Scrutiny, and contributing opinion writer with The New York Times. Kate, always great to have you on decision days. Welcome back to WNYC.

**Kate Shaw** (1:51)
Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:52)
So let's cut right to the chase. Does the Supreme Court think that recreational marijuana use is reason enough to deny somebody a gun permit?

**Kate Shaw** (2:03)
It does not, and it does not think that unanimously. So this is one of the rare cases in the big kind of end of term rush where the justices basically agree. So as you said, this is just about an hour ago, the opinion in Hamani came down, and again, the court basically unanimously, there are a couple of concurring opinions, but they all agree with the bottom line, which is that this law that prohibits gun possession by individuals just because they're users of marijuana is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:27)
So is this a coalition of justices who want to support people's rights who use cannabis, and justices who want to support people's right to own guns at almost any cost?

**Kate Shaw** (2:39)
This is the unusual convergence of those, potentially. I think this is actually, given how expansively the court has read the Second Amendment and its right to keep and bear arms in recent cases really for the last two decades, it's hard to see this case coming out any other way. If you have this very central constitutional right, it's hard to see the government being able to infringe it on the basis that it did here. So basically, this is a federal law that has lots of, it prohibits people from possessing guns in a bunch of different categories.
Some of them the court has actually, even in this new Second Amendment era, upheld. So a law say prohibiting individuals convicted of domestic violence crimes from possessing firearms. But here there's a provision that prohibits the possession of guns by individuals who are unlawful users of controlled substances.
Himani in this case was somebody who had a gun and admitted that he used marijuana about every other day. And that was the entire basis for the feds charging him with possession of a firearm. And the court basically said, under this historical method that we use to decide whether gun restrictions can survive, but also given the kind of contemporary status of marijuana, right? Which is of course decriminalized in many places and many Americans are regular users of marijuana. There isn't a sufficiently strong government interest in keeping marijuana users from having firearms, whereas there is real evidence that regular users of marijuana are very dangerous as gun owners. And for those kind of both historical and practical contemporary reasons, this basically unanimous court strikes the law down.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:10)
Right. Some of the particulars of this case, which I haven't followed, but from what I've read, and you can correct me if any of this is wrong, are that in 2022, Ali Hamani, who's a Pakistani American citizen, had his Texas home searched by the FBI for suspected terrorism-related activities. He cooperated with the agents, pointed them to a firearm that he legally owned, as well as telling them that he used marijuana every other day. That's the quote that I saw, every other day. And so the government attempted to prosecute him under a law that makes it a crime to be an unlawful user of a controlled substance.