Brown v. United States
The Supreme Court ruled that an old state drug conviction can trigger the Armed Career Criminal Act's 15-year mandatory minimum as long as the drug involved was listed as a federal controlled substance when that state crime was committed — even if the drug was later taken off the federal schedules.
The decision means that technical updates to federal drug lists, such as removing a radioactive compound used in a Parkinson's medication from the definition of cocaine, cannot retroactively erase the legal weight of prior drug convictions at sentencing.
“A prior drug conviction for an offense punishable by 10 years' imprisonment augurs a risk of future dangerousness even if the drug is no longer considered dangerous.”
The majority's core rationale for why later changes to federal drug schedules don't erase the legal weight of old drug convictions.
How it got here: Brown's ACCA sentence was affirmed by the Third Circuit; Jackson's was affirmed by the Eleventh Circuit after that court vacated and reconsidered its initial ruling; the Supreme Court granted both petitions and consolidated the cases.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Justin Brown had multiple Pennsylvania marijuana convictions between 2009 and 2014; Eugene Jackson had Florida cocaine convictions from 1998 and 2004. Both were later caught illegally carrying guns as convicted felons. At sentencing, prosecutors sought 15-year mandatory minimums under the Armed Career Criminal Act, but the federal drug schedules had since changed — hemp was partially excluded from the marijuana definition, and a radioactive cocaine derivative used in a Parkinson's diagnostic drug was removed from the cocaine definition. Both men argued their old convictions could no longer qualify as serious drug offenses under federal law.
The question before the Court
Can an old state drug conviction count toward the Armed Career Criminal Act's 15-year mandatory minimum if the drug involved was on the federal controlled-substances list when that crime happened but was later removed from those schedules?
The Court's answer
Yes — a prior state drug conviction counts as an Armed Career Criminal Act predicate if the drug involved was on the federal controlled-substances schedules at the time of that state crime, even if the drug was later removed.
The Court grounded its ruling in its 2011 McNeill v. United States precedent, which established that ACCA takes a "backward-looking" approach — examining the law as it existed when the defendant committed the prior offense. The majority also pointed to ACCA's parallel treatment of prior federal drug convictions: a federal conviction under the Controlled Substances Act is a permanent ACCA predicate regardless of later schedule changes, and the majority saw no reason to treat equivalent state and federal drug conduct differently under back-to-back clauses in the same statute. Later technical updates to the drug schedules — such as removing a radioactive Parkinson's drug compound from the definition of cocaine — do not erase the seriousness of old drug convictions.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
People convicted of illegally possessing a firearm who have old drug convictions on their record may still face a 15-year mandatory minimum even if the specific drug involved in those old convictions has since been dropped from the federal controlled-substances list. Defense lawyers can no longer use minor technical amendments to federal drug schedules to wipe away ACCA predicates for past serious drug activity.
What changes now
Both Brown's and Jackson's sentences under ACCA's 15-year mandatory minimum stand, as the Third and Eleventh Circuit judgments are affirmed. Going forward, defendants with old state drug convictions cannot avoid ACCA's sentencing enhancement by pointing to subsequent federal schedule amendments that removed the relevant drug. Courts must ask whether the drug was federally scheduled at the time of the prior state offense. The ruling leaves open questions about state drug crimes that predate federal scheduling of the same substance.
What this does not decide
The ruling does not address how ACCA applies when a state criminalized a drug before the federal government did — a scenario the majority acknowledges its rule would exclude from ACCA's reach. It also does not decide whether its backward-looking approach extends to other types of changes in the federal drug laws beyond schedule amendments.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (6). Justice Alito (author), joined by Justice Roberts, Justice Thomas, Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett.
Dissent (2). Justice Jackson (author), joined by Justice Kagan.
Dissent — Justice Jackson
“One might harbor doubts that the sentencing policy that Congress enacted is sensible, just, or effective. But it is the one that Congress wrote, and we remain dutybound to apply the law as written. In my view, the majority has failed to do so here.”Justice Jackson's closing argument that the majority substituted its own policy judgment for the law Congress actually wrote.
Justice Jackson argues that ACCA's text definitively answers the question: cross-references work by plugging in the referenced provision as it currently exists when the statute is applied — here, the drug schedules in effect at the time of the federal firearms offense. She says the majority misreads McNeill, which addressed the backward-looking inquiry into a defendant's state statute of conviction, not the forward-looking federal benchmark used to evaluate that conviction. She also argues the majority abandons the categorical approach by focusing on the actual drugs involved in the prior crimes rather than the statutory elements. Justice Kagan joined the full dissent; Justice Gorsuch joined Parts I, II, and III (the textual and precedent arguments) but not Part IV (the policy and purpose arguments). Read the full dissent →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- ACCA imposes a 15-year mandatory minimum on convicted felons who illegally possess a firearm and have three prior 'serious drug offenses.' A state crime qualifies only if it involves a controlled substance matching the federal definition. The key disputed question was at what point in time that federal definition had to match state law: when the defendant committed the prior state crime, when the federal gun charge was committed, or when the defendant was sentenced for the gun charge.
- The Court relied on McNeill v. United States (2011), which established that ACCA takes a 'backward-looking' approach — sentencing courts examine the law as it existed when the defendant violated it. McNeill held that a later reduction in the maximum sentence for a prior offense didn't strip that conviction of its ACCA-qualifying status. The majority extended the same logic to later changes in the federal drug schedules.
- The parallel structure of ACCA's text reinforced this reading. The provision covering prior federal drug-crime predicates treats a conviction as a permanent predicate regardless of later schedule changes — whether a defendant was convicted under the Controlled Substances Act is a historical fact that later amendments cannot undo. The majority saw no reason to treat otherwise identical state and federal drug conduct differently under back-to-back clauses in the same statute.
- The Court rejected the 'reference canon' argument that a cross-reference to federal drug schedules automatically incorporates the most current version. ACCA's reference to 'section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act' by specific section number is a specific statutory reference, which under the reference canon incorporates that provision as it existed when ACCA was enacted — not as it changes from year to year with the Attorney General's annual schedule updates.
- Both defendants invoked the rule of lenity — the principle that genuinely ambiguous criminal statutes should be read in the defendant's favor. The Court rejected this argument because the statute was not 'grievously ambiguous': context, prior precedent, and the overall statutory design together adequately showed what Congress intended, leaving no room for the tie-breaker that lenity provides.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms McNeill v. United States (563 U.S. 816)
Court reaffirms and extends McNeill's backward-looking approach to cover later changes in federal drug schedules, not just state sentencing law.