The federal rescheduling of marijuana announced by the Justice Department on Thursday doesn’t change how the Supreme Court should decide a pending case on cannabis consumers’ gun rights, the Trump administration said in a new filing.
The court heard arguments last month in the case, U.S. vs. Hemani, that was brought by a man who is challenging his conviction for unlawful possession of a gun as a person who regularly used marijuana—with several justices appearing skeptical of the federal government’s legal defense of a law banning people who use illegal drugs from having firearms.
In a letter to justices on Thursday, Trump administration Solicitor General D. John Sauer said that the new DOJ order transferring marijuana products regulated by a state medical cannabis license, as well as any marijuana products that are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act, “does not affect the proper resolution of this case.”
Ali Danial Hemani’s “criminal liability depends on the law that was in effect at the time of the offense rather than the law in effect now,” the solicitor general wrote. “At the time of respondent’s offense, marijuana was classified as
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