The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed Dylan James Youngblood’s conviction on October 13, 2026, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), the federal prohibition on firearm possession by an unlawful user of or person addicted to a controlled substance. The published opinion keeps the statute facially valid in the Ninth Circuit after the Supreme Court’s 2026 decision in United States v. Hemani, but it does not decide whether the law was constitutional as applied to Youngblood. Judges Richard Tallman, John Owens, and Ryan Nelson comprised the unanimous panel, which submitted the case without oral argument on September 18.

How the case reached the Ninth Circuit

Youngblood was arrested on an outstanding felony warrant in Kalispell, Montana, in September 2023. Officers found fentanyl pills on him and two pistols, drug paraphernalia, and suspected methamphetamine in his car. According to the opinion, Youngblood acknowledged that one pistol was his and that he had used fentanyl earlier that day. A federal indictment charged him under both the “unlawful user” and “addicted to” portions of § 922(g)(3).

The district court rejected Youngblood’s facial and as-applied Second Amendment challenges. It concluded that the Second Amendment covered his conduct, then found the law consistent, as applied to frequent methamphetamine and fentanyl users, with a historical tradition of temporarily disarming intoxicated people. Youngblood entered a conditional guilty plea that preserved his ability to appeal the denial of his motion to dismiss. The district court did not separately address the statute’s “addicted to” prong, and the Ninth Circuit reviewed the constitutional ruling without deferring to the lower court’s legal conclusion.