One obvious result of winning a landmark U.S. Supreme Court gun rights case 9-0 is that the people have a much clearer path to abolish laws that contradict the new legal standard.
Last month, the high court in United States v. Hemani unanimously ruled that regular marijuana use alone does not prevent an otherwise upstanding citizen from exercising Second Amendment rights. That decision laid the groundwork for a Gun Owners of America (GOA) suit against Pennsylvania officials.
GOA wants Pennsylvania officials to modernize its gun rights restrictions
The gun rights group filed the lawsuit last week, Phillips v. Bivens, challenging Pennsylvania’s archaic law banning even recreational marijuana users from obtaining a carry license.
Craig Phillips is a U.S. Air Force veteran who remains stripped of his gun rights over a misdemeanor marijuana possession conviction—in 1994. Thirty-two years later, U.S. culture and most states have moved past such harmful restrictions for non-violent and minor offenses.
Phillips applied for a concealed carry license in 2024 but was turned away over the decades-old cannabis-related conviction. He declared that he has not used marijuana since, though that alone is no longer enough to erase gun rights.
Victory against Pennsylvania could spur successful challenges elsewhere
The veteran is permitted to own a pistol. Still, without the carry license, he cannot legally have his firearm in a vehicle or, in Philadelphia’s case, carry concealed or openly.
After Hemani, a long-overdue decision supporting Second Amendment rights even when the prospective gun owner has a checkered past, sweeping prohibitions for non-violent marijuana consumers are outdated at best.
This new lawsuit is one of, if not the first, to test the new normal for marijuana laws against Pennsylvania’s gun control system. If the Keystone State’s aging and unjustifiable restriction is erased, similar laws elsewhere should fall like dominoes.
The Supreme Court cracked the door open to updating federal and state marijuana laws pertaining to firearms, and the GOA challenge is the logical next step in erasing this arbitrary prohibition.
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