The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that a guy named Ali Hemani shouldn't have been charged with illegal gun possession under a law that apparently doesn't apply the way prosecutors thought it did. All nine justices agreed. When was the last time nine justices agreed on lunch orders.
Hemani used marijuana. The feds stripped his gun rights. Then they charged him for having a gun without gun rights. A lower court said that's not how the statute works. The Supreme Court said correct, that's not how the statute works. Prosecutors spent years and taxpayer money arguing that words mean different words.
Retail traders saw this headline and immediately checked if there's a cannabis-and-firearms ETF they can buy at the top. There isn't. They'll create one anyway. Some genius in a Reddit thread is already explaining how this ruling means Tilray is going to the moon because of Second Amendment synergies. He owns seventeen shares and thinks the Supreme Court cares about his Robinhood account.
The justices didn't say marijuana users should have guns. They didn't say marijuana users shouldn't have guns. They said the statute prosecutors used doesn't cover what prosecutors said it covers. This is what passes for a landmark ruling. Nine people in robes agreed that reading is fundamental.
Hemani's lawyers get to bill for a Supreme Court victory. Hemani gets his case dismissed. The federal government gets to rewrite its internal memos about which laws mean which things. And you get to pretend this changes anything about your portfolio, which it doesn't, because the Supreme Court doesn't move markets and neither does your technical analysis of a head-and-shoulders pattern you drew on a meme stock while high.
The real takeaway: if it takes a unanimous Supreme Court decision to confirm what a law actually says, maybe the law was written by the same people who write prospectuses that nobody reads before hitting the buy button.
Photo by manish panghal on Unsplash
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