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Notes -
SCOTUS picks a couple Gun Cases... kinda
SCOTUS has granted cert on two separate firearms-related cases, Wolford v. Lopez and US v. Hemani, for the upcoming term, and they're a bit night-and-day.
In Wolford, plaintiffs asked to block a law after Hawaii had put an effective ban on carry in almost all of the state. This is the 'Bruen says you can't just declare the entire island a sensitive space, Hawaii asked how about five islands then' case. While a couple goofier parts of the law did receive a temporary injunction, the lower courts notably did not block a requirement that CCW permitees get explicit and specific permission from any private property owner before carrying on their property; even the Second Circuit found this sort of requirement (nicknamed a "vampire rule" by opponents) as so likely unconstitutional as to mandate a temporary restraining order against it. Worse, the 9th Circuit did so under a chain of logic depending on very recent laws and sometimes even private company restrictions to justify Hawaii's rule, with little actual relevant to the rule in question here, while simultaneously promoting the historical analogues to such wide spread of generality as to permit any law. For the "vampire rule" specifically, Hawaii was only able to find two analogues even under that widely expansive standard, one an anti-poaching statute and one a literal post-Civil War racist Black Code, and the 9th Circuit still found it close enough despite the explicit text of Bruen that "[W]e doubt that three colonial regulations could suffice to show a tradition..." This is, yet again, plain defiance of higher court rulings.
Which makes the actual cert grant weird, because it's not really getting into all of that. The only question SCOTUS granted cert on was the "vampire" rule itself; the petitioners also asked about the 9th Circuit's fishing expedition into more recent laws (and non-laws), and SCOTUS punted on that despite a wide and clear circuit split. SCOTUS can and has granted cert for broader questions that petitioners asked, before, and without doing so, this seems near-certain to result in a decision good for one case only; even a Thomas-level dicta won't actually have a holding that applies even to other vampire rules, nevermind other 'declare an island a sensitive place'-style laws.
Hemani is more complicated. A lot of media coverage focuses on a comically bad set of claimed background details -- the US government claims Hemani is not merely a drug user or a jerk but a literal Iran-tied worshipper of terrorism -- and to a large extent, those claimed details overdetermine the near-certain resolution of this case. Like Rahimi, SCOTUS wants the case with the worst possible optics so as to give the thumbs-up to expansive gun control regulations; there's even a lot of tea leaves to suggest that the Biden-era DoJ put some effort into tailoring this case, given that the government conceded the case as covered by a different case they thought wrongly decided. A naive reader might hope that this is going to result in some broader rule that, even if bad for Hemani himself, leaves stricter rules for merely incidental drug-and-gun users, but you'd have to be really naive.
Which makes the actual cert grant weird. The lower courts put a lot of analysis on how poorly the government supported a blanket ban and how expansively they held it to apply to cases far more unreasonable than Hemani's, but ultimately it leaves the prohibited person rule in place so long as the government show the drug user wasn't sober while possessing the gun. Indeed, there were other earlier cases with the same constitutional question, answer, and far more palatable facts: the government just didn't request cert for Connelly; they don't seem to have been important enough for SCOTUS to care. Nor, frankly, does this case even seem to leave things unsolvable even for the constraints of its specific people, since not only does Hemani have a bunch of other things going on worth a lengthy prison sentence, it's not even clear why the government couldn't prove or at least present evidence toward the Connelly intoxicated-while-possessing standard.
There might be some schadenfruede to watch the left side of the bench throw away due process rights in favor of gun control (or, conversely, Thomas and Alito throwing gun rights under the bus because eww pot), but only to the extent anyone has any shame left.
On its own, these would not necessarily been that offensive as selections, but they are on their own. The court's selection of other recent cases has not been quick to grab every marginal or borderline case. There's no small number of other, broader cases going up before the court and only getting the punt. Duncan and Viramontes are both up for cert, now, and in Duncan's case both for final judgement and for all the marbles: failing to grant cert does not merely encourage more broad gun control, but actively will claw back a lot of previously-lawfully-owned property with a happy finger-flip to the Takings Clause, too. There's no law saying the court can only take so many gun cases, but if you had to put a bet about whether the court would pick two or four, the over/under is pretty clear.
Vullo Is Back... kinda
lol jk, there's basically zero chance of a cert grant on these facts
Adamiak had his day in the Fourth Circuit... kinda
Adamiak was accused and found guilty of posessing machine guns. The SAF has more details on both the charges and the convictions, but to be as a tl;dr: they weren't actually machine guns, or even guns. The ATF argued, under the Trump admin, that disabled (sometimes to the point of being cut in half) and inert pieces of a firearm were still machine guns or rocket launchers, because they could be brought to real functionality... by long efforts by skilled experts bringing in sizable parts, in some cases including everything that actually functioned.
Where the court says "thoroughly reviewed", that's got a bit of an asterisk. The Double Jeopardy clause gets a bit more than a page; the other constitutional arguments get...
Yes, that Bianchi. Happy Fuck You Too Day, Justices, this is what your punts have bought; this is the nonconsentual volunteer VanDerStok demanded. And it's going to go nowhere. Malinowski is still dead, his widow's lawsuit is going nowhere, and no one cares that the agents involved gathered more bodycam footage of his widow pissing than they did of the actual raid. Dexter Taylor's still in prison, and in the unlikely situation his case ever gets to a court that actually recognized the Second Amendment as existing in their courtroom, he'll have served a majority of his unjust sentence first.
Reese v. ATF Wins... kinda
Reese is one of many lawsuits challenging the federal prohibition on sales of handguns by FFLs to people between the age of 18 and 20. Most of these have died quick deaths to mootness; prospective plaintiffs can only bring a challenge for three years after the matter becomes ripe on their 18th birthday and before it becomes moot on their 21st, court cases making decisions in that time frame (and not involving illegal immigrants) are rare, and they're rarer still in Second Amendment contexts. Organizational plaintiffs have thus had to prepare a consistent parade of young adults willing to sacrifice a lot of potential negative attention in trade for benefits that likely won't include them, while also ducking other procedural hurdles.
But Reese pulled it off. A complaint filed in November of 2020 eventually made it to a January 2025 appeals court decision which held:
And even more surprisingly the federal government did not appeal to SCOTUS. Perhaps that's downstream of a change in administrations, perhaps it's just caution about setting broad jurisprudence against a law, perhaps it's just about incompetence. But finally, a major change that could drastically impact a lot of people could apply to jurisdictions too wide for legislatures to just file the serial numbers off and try again, even if it's just one circuit.
Why am I only writing about it now? Why hasn't been newsworthy that a whole Circuit has let 18-year-olds buy handguns?
Well, the circuit hadn't; for various procedural reasons the appeals court does not issue mandates, and the trial court was in no hurry. October 7th finally (finally!) had a final judgement issued. And that judgement came with a massive caveat:
That's not even a "if you were a FFL and a member of these orgs before November 2020, you can't be prosecuted under this unconstitutional law". Only where the buyers are under-20 and were members of the groups a half-decade before does the declaration apply. This judgement might not be literally absolutely toothless -- someone might have bought their thirteen-year-old kid a membership in the SAF five years back -- but it's so close that the distinction is meaningless. Forget "old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit", we've got young men making serious sacrifices for shade that covers nobody, ever.
The judgement was revoked for other even dumber reasons -- the judge demanded each org provide a verified membership list within 21 days, which wasn't going to fly at SAF for a variety well-formed objections and the government (claims to) have never asked for or wanted in the first place. So now we're waiting til October 27th to even start planning on how to have a final judgement in a case whose appeal opinion issued on January 30th, and I can accurately joke about how a healthy woman can make a baby faster than Robert R Summerhays, a duly-appointed honorable member of the federal court system, can make a decision protecting the real rights of tens or hundreds of thousands of people. And assuming the judge in question is not excessively overdue, in a month I can even joke about how, no, the courts don't do that for normal people.
(Additional bonus: no attorney's fees for the plaintiffs, so they probably spent between 50k and 150k on a case that means bupkiss. Why? Because fuck you that's why.)
WRT Hemani, it really seems like some court at some point needs to question whether marijuana really fits the definition of a Schedule I controlled substance. I'm not a user, or even a fan of it, but "no known medical use" seems pretty flat on its face given that most states have accepted medical uses. But I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath for government policy to have to, uh, actually make sense to a lay person like me, and it doesn't impact me directly anyway.
Maybe if a hypothetical right wing administration tried to put Mifepristone on that list would we actually see some questions about "rational basis" here. But (fortunately, at least for my moderate views on abortion) the broader right seems mostly-okay(?) with the status quo where the FDA has legalized and regulated it nationwide, despite newfound state regulation of other (non-drug-induced) methods.
Apparently (article, opinion), this happened back in 1994, but the appeals panel found that the DEA's interpretation of the statute was not unreasonable.
But that was 30 years ago, so perhaps more scientific studies are available nowadays.
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For decades there have been synthetic THC pills approved for medicinal use such as Marinol. THC is FDA approved. So strange that extracting THC from marijuana is Schedule 1 but synthesizing it I'm a lab is not.
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I think we are slowly starting to establish the evidence base for the current schedule to maybe be appropriate.
For a long time "medical" use was just cover really, and for some of the proposed indications (anxiety, insomnia) it's at this point understood to be an actively bad idea. Chronic pain is a bit more debatable and for increasing appetite it actually works great.
The bigger problem is the growing damage to general human flourishing and the really significant negative impact on patients in the psychiatric population.
Would you be willing to make a deep dive/effort post about pot? I’ve definitely gotten the impression that it’s gotten an undeservedly good rap.
Ughhhh for medical work a deep dive involves citation which sounds like a lot of work. Maybe at some point, but for now some thoughts:
Weed is a drug. Maybe more on the alcohol tier, but it's still a drug. If you talk to people who use many of them sound like addicts. It's not a mistake to notice this, they are. You can have withdrawal (although it's in many ways not as bad as some other withdrawals). People in denial of having a problem... Also, cannabis hyperemesis syndrome is a thing. You'll see patients come in multiple times a month with profuse vomiting and we know the exact cause and they have zero ability or willingness to calm down. Total addiction.
It hampers human flourishing. For many people the primary problem is that it makes them feel okay with their life being ass. To some extent that's a good thing but I know plenty of people who didn't try to fix stuff as a result. That's bad.
Plenty of people (as with alcohol) use a little bit and don't have any problems at all. Moderation is possible. This creates a context of false sense of security.
The association with positive impact on the supposed indications is questionable. Anxiety and insomnia are best treated by addressing root issues. Use a drug is a crutch that prevents recovery. For many it actually worsens these things, and passing out does not mean "sleeping."
Most importantly, like with alcohol a particular subset of the patient absolutely cannot. Psych patients. These people will go by even more unsafe street weed these days if they can't get it at dispensary (usually stepped on with a....variety) so hard to stop it, but it worsens all kinds of shit and can make recovery and tons of these people think its an adequate treatment.
Nearly every patient with a psychiatric diagnosis you see in the hospital - and I'm talking on medical floors too, has a massive weed addiction.
Some of these people also appear to have been created by weed.
Additionally, when I was young I remember people going "pshh they are overstating the risks, but risks exist?" with drugs. Lots of young people today are "this is perfectly healthy."
It's a cope. It's a way for us to ignore the severely blackpilling issues. Some non-trivial percentage of young men and women will realistically 1) never own a house, 2) never have a stable long-term relationship, 3) never have a social circle more than 2-3 people they can trust. So, why not get high (or drink) most days?
These personal problems are, of course, connected to the large-scale social problems that will cause despair in even the most radical optimists. I'm an optimist, but the dating situation is pretty severe for young men and women. It's hard for anyone 30+ with a stable relationship (or a stable past relationship) to understand.
I mean, I get why people take the Soma, but also it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Additionally most people don't have that insight into why they are doing it.
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I mean, the literal legal ruling would be something like ‘47 states or whatever are breaking the law and it’s up to congress to change it’. Obviously courts don’t want to touch that and bringing a lawsuit wouldn’t actually do anything.
That does seem like the most likely outcome, especially with the current high court, but there have been cases where courts have "pressed X to doubt" on questionable factual assertions by the executive. "Is there lawlessness on the streets of [several cities] sufficient to send in the National Guard?" is one such case that's ongoing (I largely expect SCOTUS to side with the executive there, for better or worse). But I guess half a century of Tradition! in this case is only one of "arbitrary and capricious".
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