US Appeals Court Sides with Medical Marijuana Users in Challenge to Gun Ban

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a federal law that bars illegal drug users from owning guns potentially could be deemed unconstitutional when it is applied to medical marijuana users.

A three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, opens new tab 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 U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment.

It relied on the 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen holding that gun restrictions must be "consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

The Florida plaintiffs, who originally sued alongside then-Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat, before she left office, argued that keeping guns from users of medical marijuana in states that have authorized its use is not consistent with that historical tradition.

Florida legalized medical marijuana in 2016. While the drug remains illegal at the federal level, the plaintiffs noted the U.S. Department of Justice is barred under the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment from using funds to interfere with state medical marijuana programs, including to prosecute individuals.

The U.S. Department of Justice argued that barring marijuana users from having guns was nonetheless consistent with a long-standing tradition of disarming convicted felons or dangerous individuals. A lower-court judge agreed.

But U.S. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch, writing for the panel, said at most, the plaintiffs were committing a federal misdemeanor by using marijuana, had not had been convicted of a crime and not been shown at this stage in the case to pose such a danger as a result of their drug use they should be disarmed.

"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," she wrote.

Branch said her opinion was consistent with a decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year holding that a pot-smoking gun owner in Texas could not be constitutionally prosecuted for violating the federal ban.

Her opinion was joined by U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Luck, a fellow appointee of Republican President Donald Trump, and Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Gerald Tjoflat, an appointee of Republican President Gerald Ford.

William Hall, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at Jones Walker, in a statement welcomed the ruling, saying it vindicated their position.

"As we have argued from the beginning of this case, the 2nd Amendment does not permit the federal government to categorically deem all medical marijuana patients to be too dangerous to exercise their core constitutional rights," he said.

The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.