TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month in a closely watched Second Amendment case, lawyers are tangling over how the decision should apply to federal prohibitions on medical-marijuana patients buying and possessing guns.
Lawyers for Florida medical-marijuana patients and the Biden administration filed briefs last week at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that staked opposing positions on what the Supreme Court ruling means for medical-marijuana users.
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In the ruling, in a case known as United States v. Rahimi, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on gun possession by people under domestic-violence restraining orders.
But in a brief filed Friday, Will Hall, a Tallahassee attorney for the Florida medical-marijuana patients, tried to draw contrasts between Rahimi and pot users.
Hall wrote that “there is no historical tradition or principle of disarming persons like the appellants (the medical-marijuana patients) who have not committed serious or violent crimes and who have not shown themselves to be a threat to the safety of others.”
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U.S. Department of Justice attorneys, however, pointed to marijuana remaining illegal under federal law and said the Rahimi decision supports a conclusion that preventing gun possession by people who illegally use drugs “comports with the Second Amendment.”
“History shows that legislatures hold authority to disarm categories of persons whose possession of firearms would endanger themselves or others. Rahimi itself recognized that ‘(s)ince the founding, our nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,’” the Justice Department brief said. “The limited restriction at issue here, which applies only to individuals engaged in the regular and ongoing use of illegal drugs, ‘fits comfortably’ within that tradition and the principles underpinning it.”
Then-Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and medical-marijuana patients filed the lawsuit in 2022 challenging the prohibitions. While marijuana is illegal under federal law, Florida voters in 2016 passed a constitutional amendment to allow patients to use marijuana for medical conditions.
The lawsuit said the federal prohibitions “forbid Floridians from possessing or purchasing a firearm on the sole basis that they are state-law-abiding medical marijuana patients.”
But U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor dismissed the case in November 2022, spurring the plaintiffs to go to the Atlanta-based appeals court. Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, who was elected in 2022 to succeed Fried, dropped out of the case, but it has continued with the patients as plaintiffs.
A panel of the appeals court heard arguments in October 2023 but put the case on hold while the Supreme Court considered the Rahimi case.
The plaintiffs want the appeals court to reverse the dismissal of the case and send it back to district court.
Hall wrote that the medical-marijuana patients seek “only narrow, common-sense relief. Any risk of firearm misuse they pose can be mitigated by prohibiting the possession of a firearm while they are under the influence of marijuana. Instead, the challenged laws and regulations disarm the appellants at all times (including in their own homes) on the basis that they have ingested marijuana in recent days or weeks.”
Meanwhile, as the Rahimi case was pending, the appeals court also put on hold a separate case challenging a Florida law that prevents people under age 21 from buying rifles and shotguns. Lawyers in that case also will file briefs in the coming weeks, according to an online docket.
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