A decades-old pot charge is now at the heart of a high-stakes gun-rights fight in western Pennsylvania, as a Butler County man and a national advocacy group take their case to federal court.
A Butler County resident, joined by Gun Owners of America, has filed a federal lawsuit arguing that his 1994 misdemeanor conviction for possessing a small amount of marijuana should not keep him from getting a Pennsylvania license to carry a handgun in 2024. The complaint casts the dispute as a constitutional test of whether minor, long-ago drug convictions can be used to keep otherwise law-abiding people from carrying a firearm in public.
As reported by TribLIVE, plaintiff Craig Philips is a retired U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs mechanic who says he was convicted in 1994 for a small amount of marijuana and then denied a license to carry in 2024. The lawsuit names Pennsylvania State Police Acting Commissioner Lt. Col. George L. Bivens and Butler County Sheriff Michael T. Slupe as defendants and asks a federal judge to declare that license denials based on minor marijuana convictions violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, along with an order permanently blocking that practice.
How Pennsylvania's carry rules work
In Pennsylvania, county sheriffs handle the nuts-and-bolts job of issuing licenses to carry, but they do not set the rules on their own. State statutes and Pennsylvania State Police guidance spell out who qualifies and which offenses knock someone out of the running.
The Pennsylvania State Police explains that certain convictions and federal prohibitions can make a person ineligible to possess a firearm and specifically cautions that medical-marijuana cardholders may still run into firearms restrictions under federal law. The official rundown of disqualifying offenses and related instructions appears on the Pennsylvania State Police website.
The constitutional argument
Philips’ legal team argues that the denial of his license flows from a categorical rule that clashes with the Supreme Court’s post-Bruen framework, which requires modern gun regulations to line up with the Constitution’s text and historical tradition.
The plaintiffs lean heavily on the Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen (2022), contending that blanket denials tied to minor, decades-old marijuana convictions lack any meaningful historical analogue and therefore cannot survive constitutional scrutiny.
A shifting federal backdrop
The federal landscape around guns and marijuana has shifted in recent months. On June 18, 2026, the Supreme Court narrowed the government’s ability to categorically prohibit marijuana users from possessing firearms, a development the plaintiffs cite as support for challenging broad, automatic denials.
The complaint also points to a January 2026 interim final rule from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that tightened how agencies define an “unlawful user,” emphasizing patterns of regular, recent use rather than a single, isolated incident from years ago. Details of that rule appear in the Federal Register (ATF).
What the complaint asks the court to do
The lawsuit does not just challenge Philips’ individual denial, it attacks the broader rule behind it. The plaintiffs ask the court to require officials to point to individualized, up-to-date evidence that an applicant is dangerous before turning them down and to forbid automatic rejections based solely on small or decades-old marijuana convictions.
They are seeking a declaratory judgment that such denials violate the Second and Fourteenth Amendments, along with a permanent injunction that would bar future license denials on that basis, according to the complaint summarized by TribLIVE.
Why it matters locally
If Philips wins, the ripple effects would likely hit every sheriff’s office in the state, including Butler County, where licenses are processed locally. Sheriffs across Pennsylvania could have to revisit how they vet applicants with old misdemeanor records, particularly those tied to small marijuana cases.
Butler County’s sheriff’s office, which oversees license applications for residents, would be among the agencies expected to revisit procedures if the challenge succeeds, according to the Butler County Sheriff.
The case effectively links a hometown licensing dispute to national Second Amendment battles and ongoing federal rulemaking. As it moves through the courts, lawyers and county licensing officials are expected to keep a close eye on how judges apply the Supreme Court’s text-and-history test to the intersection of past drug convictions and today’s public-carry rights, with motions and potential appeals likely to follow.
