A federal lawsuit filed in the Western District of Pennsylvania is taking aim at a state law that permanently strips residents of their right to carry concealed firearms if they have any history of drug possession, no matter how minor or how long ago the offense occurred.
The lawsuit was filed by Craig Philips, a Butler County resident and honorably discharged U.S. Air Force veteran, alongside Gun Owners of America, Inc. (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF). The legal complaint names Lt. Col. George L. Bivens, Acting Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, and Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe as defendants in their official capacities.
According to court documents, Philips served in the military from 1989 to 1992 and later worked for 12 years as an air conditioning mechanic for the Department of Veterans Affairs before retiring. In 1994, he was convicted of an ungraded misdemeanor for possessing a small amount of marijuana.
Under Pennsylvania law, the offense carries a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $500 fine, which is less than the maximum 90-day penalty for a non-traffic summary offense in the state.
Philips states he has not used marijuana since his 1994 conviction, has no other criminal record, and is legally permitted to buy and own firearms under both state and federal law. However, when he applied for a Pennsylvania License to Carry Firearms (LTCF) in 2024, Sheriff Slupe denied the application based on the state’s automatic disqualification for any violation of the Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act.
The plaintiffs contend that a lifetime carry ban over a 30-year-old minor offense cannot stand under the legal standards established by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen. That landmark ruling requires the government to prove that any gun restriction is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation from the Founding era.
The lawsuit highlights a very recent U.S. Supreme Court precedent from June 2026, United States v. Hemani, which found the federal gun ban for “unlawful users” of controlled substances unconstitutional as applied to a regular marijuana user. In that case, the Supreme Court rejected the government’s attempt to use historic “habitual drunkard” laws to justify disarming citizens, noting those laws did not target people who simply drank regularly, and concluding that the government cannot claim “that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous without any further showing.”
The plaintiffs argue that Pennsylvania’s law similarly fails to show that individuals like Philips are dangerous. By defining its scope through a broad drug statute, the law fails to “confine its reach to those who are categorically and unusually dangerous,” according to the complaint.
In Pennsylvania, a carry license is required not just for hidden carry, but also to transport a firearm inside a vehicle, to carry a firearm at all on the streets of Philadelphia, or to carry a weapon during a declared state of emergency. Consequently, the lawsuit notes that the current law transforms the state’s largest city into a “public carry-free zone” for anyone with a minor drug mark on their record.
The lawsuit does not challenge firearm restrictions for individuals convicted of serious drug felonies or those who are otherwise barred from owning guns under federal law. Instead, it asks the court to declare the state’s blanket restriction unconstitutional for citizens who are otherwise eligible to possess firearms, and to block the state from denying carry permits without individualized evidence that an applicant poses a danger to public safety.
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