In a decision that could reshape the intersection of cannabis laws and the Second Amendment, a U.S. appeals court has ruled that the federal government may have overstepped in barring medical marijuana users from owning firearms.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta found that Florida residents who legally use medical marijuana had made a credible case that the gun ban, as applied to them, runs afoul of their constitutional right to bear arms.
The judges leaned heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 *Bruen* ruling, which requires firearm restrictions to align with the nation’s historical traditions of gun regulation. The plaintiffs argued that treating medical marijuana patients—legal under Florida law since 2016—as dangerous outlaws was inconsistent with that tradition.
The Justice Department countered that marijuana users should be disarmed in the same way convicted felons or those deemed dangerous are. A lower court had agreed, but Judge Elizabeth Branch, writing for the appeals panel, was unconvinced. She noted the plaintiffs had not been convicted of crimes and that using marijuana amounted, at most, to a federal misdemeanor—not grounds to strip away a core constitutional right.
Her opinion echoed a similar ruling last year from the 5th Circuit, which found that prosecuting a gun-owning cannabis user in Texas under the same law was unconstitutional.
The ruling was joined by Judges Robert Luck and Gerald Tjoflat. Attorneys for the Florida group hailed the outcome, calling it a recognition that medical marijuana patients should not automatically be branded too dangerous to own firearms.
The Justice Department has yet to issue a response.
The case—*Florida Commissioner of Agriculture v. Attorney General of the United States*—continues to unfold, but for now, medical marijuana users in Florida have scored a significant victory in their fight to be both patients and gun owners.
