Tag: supreme-court

  • Supreme Court: Gun Prosecution of Casual Marijuana User Violates Second Amendment

    The Supreme Court ruled today that the prosecution of a casual marijuana user for unlawful gun possession violates the Second Amendment.

    The ruling extends Second Amendment rights to a casual marijuana user, but otherwise says little new about the Court’s historical-tradition approach to the Second Amendment.

    The case, United States v. Hemani, arose out of the government’s prosecution of Ali Hemani for knowingly possessing a gun in his home while being an unlawful drug user, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sec. 922(g)(3). During the investigation, Hemani pointed federal agents to marijuana in his home and told them that he used it about every other day.

    The Court ruled that the prosecution violated the Second Amendment. It applied its historical-tradition approach under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, and held that the government couldn’t point to a sufficiently similar historical analog to its prosecution of a person for casual marijuana use.

    In particular, the Court rejected the government’s sweeping theory that the statute validly bans “an individual from possessing a gun from the moment he becomes an unlawful user of any controlled substance and remains in effect until he ceases being one,” regardless of the drug, or the amounts ingested, or the person’s dangerousness, or the reasons the person keeps a gun, or how safely the person keeps the gun. It said that the government’s analogy to historical “habitual drunkard” laws “fails on every metric.”

    According to the Court, the ruling “is narrow.” It doesn’t “address efforts to ban addicts, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm” or “other prophylactic laws Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms.” It also doesn’t address federal law that “disarm[s] individuals convicted of felonies.” Finally, it doesn’t address cases where a particular person’s use of marijuana, or any other drug, renders the person dangerous.

    Justice Thomas concurred, adding that Section 922(g)(3) “appears to exceed Congress’s enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce.”

    Justice Jackson concurred, joined by Justice Sotomayor, expressing her view that the Court “veered off course in Bruen.”

  • Supreme Court Says Criminal Appeal Waivers are Unenforceable if They Result in “Miscarriage of Justice”

    The Supreme Court today set the standard for criminal appeal waivers: They are unenforceable if they would result in a “miscarriage of justice.”

    The ruling sets a uniform standard for criminal appeal waivers, which are an increasingly common part of a criminal plea in federal court. The standard is lower than the one that the Fifth Circuit applied below, and lower than the government’s proposed standard. Still, the Court emphasized that it nevertheless “sets a high bar.”

    The case, Hunter v. United States, arose when Munson Hunter III entered into a plea agreement that included an appeal waiver. (This means that Hunter waived his right to appeal his agreement and his sentencing, with a narrow exception not applicable here.) The court then sentenced Hunter to prison time. It also sentenced him to participate in a mental-health treatment program that included mental-health medications prescribed by Hunter’s treating physician.

    Hunter appealed, arguing that the mandatory-medication condition violated due process. The Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal, however, pointing to Hunter’s appeal waiver in his plea agreement.

    The Supreme Court vacated and remanded. The Court said that the proper test is that “an appeal waiver is unenforceable when it would result in a miscarriage of justice.” The Court explained:

    That rule, properly understood and applied, sets a high bar: The waiver may be set aside only if the sentence is marred by the kind of egregious error that would bring the judicial system into disrepute. The error must be obvious–not one a judge could reasonably make. And it must be of the type that would undermine public confidence in the judiciary. . . . [S]tandard-fare errors in misapplying sentencing law cannot cancel an appeal waiver. . . . But some faults in sentencing can. So a high bar is not an insurmountable one. The point of the miscarriage-of-justice limit, as many appellate courts have properly applied it, is to offer a safety valve for extreme cases–a way out of a waiver when the justice system’s basic integrity is at stake.

    The Court went on to provide some examples. It then remanded the case to apply the standard to Hunter.

    Justice Gorsuch concurred, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson. He pointed out that plea bargains and appeal waivers are increasingly common, and that appeal waivers are problematic. He wrote that the Court’s ruling is a step in the right direction “toward reining in appeal waivers.”

    Justice Kavanaugh concurred, joined by Justices Alito and Barrett. He argued that Justice Gorsuch’s concurrence “would set a lower bar for the miscarriage-of-justice exception” and that “the concurrence may not be entirely consistent with the Court’s opinion.”

    Justice Barrett concurred, expressing skepticism “that the Supreme Court possesses an inherent, supervisory authority over inferior federal courts.” But she argued that the Court’s ruling “rests on longstanding waiver principles and thus falls within” the category of cases dealing with “the development of procedural common law” (and not the category dealing with the Court’s “inherent, supervisory authority over inferior federal courts”).

    Justice Thomas dissented, arguing that a fully enforceable appeal waiver, even when it results in a miscarriage of justice, is consistent with historical practice and the rule that a defendant can voluntarily waive a right. He said that the Court’s standard lacks any grounding in law.

  • Supreme Court: No Federal District Court Jurisdiction Over State Court Judgments Subject to Further Review

    The Supreme Court ruled today that federal district courts lack jurisdiction to hear challenges to state-court judgments that are subject to further review in state appellate proceedings. The ruling applies the Rooker-Feldman doctrine to those state-court judgments, and thus limits the power of federal district courts to weigh-in on state-court cases that haven’t fully run their course in the state courts.

    The case, T.M. v. University of Maryland Medical System, arose when T.M. sought to challenge a consent order entered by a state court in federal district court. The consent order was subject to further appellate review in the state court system. (Indeed, T.M. filed an appeal of the order in the state courts.) Yet T.M. sought to challenge it in federal court.

    The Court ruled that the federal court lacked jurisdiction. The Court said that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which denies federal district courts jurisdiction over certain state-court decisions that are subject to further review within the state courts, barred the suit. The Court wrote that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine was based on two principles: (1) when plaintiffs seek federal district court review of a state court ruling, “they are seeking an exercise of appellate jurisdiction”; and (2) federal appellate jurisdiction of state-court rulings belongs exclusively to the Supreme Court (and not to lower federal courts). The Court said that the doctrine applied squarely to this case.

    The ruling makes it more difficult for state-court litigants to challenge state-court rulings in federal court. The Court today made clear that they now have to exhaust their appeals through the state courts and only then bring an appeal only to the Supreme Court.

    Justice Barrett dissented, joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kagan and Gorsuch. Justice Barrett argued that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine only applied to state-court judgments that are not subject to further state-court appeals, most usually state supreme court rulings. She also took aim at the underlying bases for the doctrine.

    Justice Thomas concurred, arguing that there’s an originalist basis for the doctrine.

  • D.C. Circuit Says Ban on Transgender Military Service Likely Violates Equal Protection

    A divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled yesterday that the Trump Administration ban on transgender individuals serving in the military likely violated equal protection.

    The ruling, while only preliminary (thus holding the plaintiffs were likely to succeed) and while applicable only to the plaintiffs in the case, nevertheless deals a significant blow to the Trump Administration efforts to ban transgender individuals from military service. It also offers a scathing assessment of those efforts, concluding that they were arbitrary and based on sheer animus.

    The ruling says that the government can’t base policy, even military policy, on animus alone; instead, the government has to have legitimate reasons.

    The case, Talbott v. United States, challenges the Administration’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. That ban arose out of President Trump’s January 27, 2025, Executive Order proclaiming that persons “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service.” President Trump, and later Secretary Hegseth, also declared that persons afflicted with gender dysphoria are unfit for military service because, among other things, their character is “inconsistent” with the “high standards . . . [of] honesty, humility, . . . and integrity.” The “Hegseth Policy” deems transgender applicants for military service unqualified; and it mandates that currently serving transgender individuals go through the administrative separation process, a process usually reserved for personnel accused of misconduct. (The Policy specifically disqualifies anyone with a history of gender dysphoria. But its broad language effectively disqualifies any transgender person, whether they have a history of gender dysphoria or not.)

    The district court ruled that plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their challenge to the Policy and entered a preliminary injunction halting the Policy’s implementation as to the plaintiffs.

    The divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part.

    Two judges agreed that the Policy likely violated equal protection. Judges Wilkins and Rogers concluded that the the Policy was based only on animus and therefore failed at any level of review. In short, they said that the Administration failed to provide a legitimate reason for the Policy, and that President Trump’s and Secretary Hegseth’s stated justifications amounted only to “a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group.” USDA v. Moreno (1973). They said that neither United States v. Skrmetti (2025) (upholding state bans on certain medical treatments for transgender minors) nor Trump v. Hawaii (2018) (upholding President Trump’s first-term travel ban) changed this.

    Judge Walker, in dissent, argued that the court should give greater deference to the Administration’s military judgment. “We have neither the expertise nor the authority to decide whether the military can exclude the plaintiffs from its ranks. The Constitution assigns that authority to Congress and the Commander in Chief.”

    Ultimately, the court only affirmed the district court injunction as to those plaintiffs already in the military, and not to the plaintiffs who are seeking accession into the military.