The Rights Afforded and The Rights Revoked: United States v. Hemani

In 2022, FBI agents arrested and charged Ali Hemani, a Pakistani-American, under 922(g)(3) for owning a gun while routinely using marijuana. Statute 922(g)(3) makes it a felony for anyone to possess a firearm while “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” [1]. Hemani fought these charges and stated that this indictment violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. Gun regulation is paramount, yet the United States’ history of disproportionately criminalizing Black and Brown communities further complicates the effects of the ongoing United States v. Hemani case. At the same time, its holding will contextualize the case’s impending impact on how the state affords or revokes the civil rights of Americans. Though the case’s verdict has not yet been released, United States v. Hemani highlighted a tension between protecting the people’s right to bear arms and the need to provide further regulation on gun laws to mitigate the violent use of guns in America.

A related case, United States v. Daniels, concluded that the law supports limits on an intoxicated person carrying firearms, but not so far as to disarm a sober citizen who used drugs in the past or a non-violent drug user. Here, the government argued against Daniels, a man with a prior 1994 marijuana conviction, by stating that the 2nd Amendment only protects “law-abiding citizens” [2]. This verbiage is destructive when contextualized through a historical lens, considering the criminalization of blackness under the “New Jim Crow", a term coined by Michelle Alexander in her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” [3]. “The New Jim Crow” has become shorthand for many anticarceral activists to describe the deep racial dimensions of criminalization and incarceration in the American criminal legal system,” [4]. These tools of criminalization and incarceration are distinctively mirrored by the “War on Drugs” policy during the 1990s. 

Laws like the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 greatly increased police presence in minority communities and prompted the construction of many new prisons across the country. These laws led to an intentional and significant rise in Black incarceration rates across the U.S. In 1994, Richard Nixon’s domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman, openly admitted to the fact that the government could not make it illegal to be black, but could associate them with heroin and police them heavily. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did,” said Ehrlichman [5]. The relationship between drug regulation and state attacks upon the rights and autonomy of the black body underpins the immense weight of Hemani v. U.S. 

For Hemani specifically, a Muslim and Pakistani man, there is a similar but not identical historical context. After the attack of 9/11, the government started discriminatory programs like the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS). According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, “More than 90,000 Muslims were registered under NSEERS, and thousands were detained, interrogated, and deported for failure to comply with special registration requirements [6]. As a result, families were torn apart, and a deep fear settled in Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities.” In this program, no one was prosecuted or tried; instead, it often led to people’s deportation or detention without charges. The government used the guise of safety to criminalize the act of being brown or Muslim. In these ways, brown communities endured the revocation of their right to freedom and citizenship based on their perceived status as a “law-abiding citizen” or even as a citizen in the first place. This complex history between discrimination, criminalization, drugs, and the rights only afforded to “law-abiding citizens” raises the stakes of this case, especially when marijuana is not legalized at the federal level. This specific “law-abiding citizen” justification serves as a way of stripping the rights of black and brown communities, expanding beyond the right to carry. 

The defendant in United States v. Hemani, Ali Hemani, is an American Muslim who recently visited his family in Iran. The FBI accused him and his family of supporting the Iranian government, prompting the raid on their home, where authorities found a gun and marijuana [7]. With the Trump administration pushing forward discriminatory and unconstitutional policies concerning the rights of immigrants through governmental programs like ICE, this indictment serves as a way of stripping the rights of the black and brown American citizens [8]. The government has already found ways to infringe on the rights of Americans past the right to carry, and the arguments concerning what rights are strictly afforded to “law-abiding citizens” ring in pro-ICE conversations, just as they laid prominent weight in the case of United States v. Daniels and now United States v. Hemani. 

 Arguing that the Bill of Rights is only afforded to “law-abiding citizens” suggests that by breaking the law, citizens or noncitizens willingly forfeit their rights by committing a crime. The majority opinion in United States v. Daniels countered the “law-abiding citizen” argument by explaining that the US Constitution defends the right to bear arms as one that should not be infringed upon. Justice O’Connor mentions that Daniels maintained his right to bear arms despite being a marijuana user because of his membership in the political community [9]. Breaking the law was not enough to fully separate him from the demos. O’Connor established that Daniels still maintained the same rights to participation as would any other citizen. Despite this conclusion, harmful arguments surrounding the rights only afforded to “law-abiding citizens” still echo in regard to other situations, rights, and causes today. These echoes have even been heard in the White House today. When justifying the widespread infringement on immigrants’ right to due process, Leavitt (the current White House Press Secretary) stated that, “If you are an individual, a foreign national, who illegally enters the United States of America, you are, by definition, a criminal"[10]. If perceived proximity to criminality is enough to take away someone’s right to due process and another’s right to bear arms, it opens the door to the possibility of other civil liberties being “justifiably” revoked. 

Simultaneously, restrictions on certain rights are necessary to maintain order and safety, especially the right to bear arms, as considered in United States v. Hemani. In the case District of Columbia v. Heller, the courts grappled with the tension between public safety and the right to bear arms. District of Columbia v. Heller upheld the individual citizen’s right to bear arms, but clarified that this is not unlimited. In this case, Dick Heller, a policeman in DC, attempted to register a handgun for his home. The district denied his application. He challenged this denial on the premise that the DC gun restrictions made it almost impossible to own a handgun, undermining his Second Amendment right. Here, the court ruled in his favor, upholding the right of citizens to bear arms, but not without restriction. The court specifically states that “longstanding prohibitions” remain true, such as prohibitions on the possession of firearms for the mentally ill, felons, and on school grounds. Such restrictions provide order and safety for the collective, but are also complicated by their own historical contexts. [11] For example, applying the context explored by the War on Drugs, the government prosecuted many people of color, leaving them felons. This permanent stain left them without the right to carry but also without the right to vote and, in some states, the right to serve on a jury. Even today, discriminatory police and criminal justice practices leave people of color disproportionately affected. In New York City alone, according to the Data Collaborative for Justice, “From 1985 to 2021, 42% of convictions involved Black people (though they made up 15% of the State’s population in 2019), 20% involved Hispanic people, and 36% involved white people.”[12]  In these ways, the “longstanding prohibitions”  or restrictions on the right to carry that are seemingly black and white are complicated by a greater context. United States v. Rahimi expands on such restrictions. 

In United States v. Rahimi, a man who committed several shootings, possessed a firearm while under a restraining order for domestic violence under the federal law 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) [13]. The courts draw on “historical principles rather than historical laws” to inform their argument that when an individual poses a threat to the physical safety of another person, they may be temporarily disarmed. In some ways, it is hard to strictly define “historical principles”. Such principles are based on the intent of past American law rather than the laws themselves. Thus, the justices had to grapple with the law’s intent to protect American citizens. Here, the state attempted to maintain a fragile balance between upholding citizens’ rights and protecting the greater population as well. Destructive periods, such as the War on Drugs, and current practices of discrimination, like the unconstitutional practices of ICE in black and brown communities, serve as ways to criminalize marginalized people and thus ‘legally’ revoke certain rights. Yet the act of denying arms to people convicted of domestic violence has significantly decreased the amount of domestic homicides, cultivating the safety of many Americans, and more specifically, women [14]. So the question arises. How can the balance between protecting citizens’ right to bear arms and protecting the broader community be maintained and cultivated equitably?  

Shootings killed or wounded 40,000 Americans in 2025, meaning more than 110 people each day [15]. Gun violence disproportionately affects black communities, and they are 14 times more likely to be murdered than whites in 2021 [16]. At the same time, “As the disparity between states with weak gun laws and those with tough ones has widened, so too has the gap in mass shootings” [17]. But with the disproportionate criminalization of people of color, it remains unclear whether laws providing further restrictions solely cultivate safety or also result in further criminalization. The solution to balance remains unclear, but at the same time, the outcome of Hemani v. US would not even constitute a solution to the issue between safety, criminalization, and the revocation of rights. What it would do, however, is further define how one's rights can be granted and or revoked. The Trump administration has played a crucial role in endorsing and implementing laws and practices that result in marginalized people’s revocation of their rights. It is vital to recognize how seemingly unconnected cases (like United States v. Hemani) can play a critical role in creating the legal grounds for preserving one’s civil rights. 

[1] United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 692 (2024).

[2] USA v. Daniels, No. 22-60596 (5th Cir. 2023).

[3] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012).

[4] Elizabeth Hinton and Deanza Cook, “The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview,” Annual Review of Criminology 4, no. 1 (June 29, 2020): 262-281. 

[5] Nkechi Taifa,“Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs.” Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, May 10, 2021. 

[6] Center for Constitutional Rights, “National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request,” Center for Constitutional Rights Justice, n.d.

[7] Madiba Dennie, “Supreme Court Continues to Shoot Self in Foot in Second Amendment Cases,” Balls and Strikes, March 5, 2026.

[8] American Immigration Council, “How ICE Went Rogue: Analysis of the Legal Authorities Governing ICE - American Immigration Council,” American Immigration Council, February 11, 2026.

[9] United States v. Daniels, No. 22-60596 (5th Cir. 2023).

[10] Stacey Dec, “Laken Riley Act: Illegal Immigration Front and Center as Trump Signs His 1st Bill into Law,” ABC7 San Francisco, January 29, 2025.

[11] District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008).

[12] Becca Cadoff et al., “Criminal Convictions in New York State 1980-2021,” Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, May 2023.

[13] United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 692 (2024).

[14] Alex Yablon, “Do Stronger Gun Laws Reduce Domestic Homicide?,” The Trace, October 6, 2018.

[15] Chip Brownlee, “Gun Violence by the Numbers in 2025,” The Trace, December 31, 2025.

[16] Center for Gun Violence Solutions,“What is Community Gun Violence?,” John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, n.d.

[17] Megan Molteni, “The Looser a State’s Gun Laws, the More Mass Shootings It Has,” Wired, August 6, 2019. 

Works Cited

Alex Yablon, “Do Stronger Gun Laws Reduce Domestic Homicide?,” The Trace, October 6, 2018.https://www.thetrace.org/2018/10/stronger-gun-laws-reduce-domestic-homicide/.

American Immigration Council, “How ICE Went Rogue: Analysis of the Legal Authorities Governing ICE - American Immigration Council,” American Immigration Council, February 11, 2026. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/ice-cbp-legal-analysis/.

Becca Cadoff et al., “Criminal Convictions in New York State 1980-2021,” Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College, May 2023. https://datacollaborativeforjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/ConvictionsReport-2.pdf. 

Center for Constitutional Rights, “National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request,” Center for Constitutional Rights Justice, n.d. https://ccrjustice.org/home/what-we-do/our-cases/national-security-entry-exit-registration-system-nseers-freedom. 

Center for Gun Violence Solutions,“What is Community Gun Violence?,” John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, n.d.. jhu.edu.

Chip Brownlee, “Gun Violence by the Numbers in 2025.” The Trace, December 31, 2025. https://www.thetrace.org/2025/12/data-shooting-stats-gun-violence-america/

Elizabeth Hinton and Deanza Cook, “The Mass Criminalization of Black Americans: A Historical Overview,” Annual Review of Criminology 4, no. 1 (June 29, 2020): 262-281. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-060520-.

Madiba Dennie “Supreme Court Continues to Shoot Self in Foot in Second Amendment Cases.” Balls and Strikes, March 5, 2026. ballsandstrikes.org.

Megan Molteni, “The Looser a State’s Gun Laws, the More Mass Shootings It Has.” Wired, August 6, 2019. wired.com.

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012).

Nkechi Taifa, “Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Disastrous War on Drugs,” Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, May 10, 2021. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/race-mass-incarceration-and-disastrous-war-drugs. 

Stacy Dec, “Laken Riley Act: Illegal Immigration Front and Center as Trump Signs His 1st Bill into Law,” ABC7 San Francisco, 29 Jan. 2025, abc7news.com/post/president-donald-trump-plans-sign-laken-riley-act-law-georgia-nursing-student-killed-jose-antonio-ibarra/15846498/