The Brief

"I sought out community college to grow my nascent interest in art and journalism."

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I had been thinking about making my own career change for over five years.

Some friends and I formed a group to discuss the book “Designing Your Life.” In that moment, our past decisions would no longer dictate our lives. We brought the design concept of iteration into practice, ready to learn from trial and error.

It took me time. I was terrified of leaving a respectable job and financial stability, even though I had lost a sense of vitality in my work. I sought out community college to grow my nascent interest in art and journalism.

I could be a student again — make mistakes, ask dumb questions, and dare to imagine a different future.

This is a project about six people, who by way of community college have made — or started — a leap of faith.

A leap of faith.

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Investment banker > aspiring dietician

Rita Kwan worked in investment banking for 15 years. People in Hong Kong considered it a good job for the salary and the benefits.

Buildings and cuisine in Hong Kong

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"I didn’t really like that at all, the so-called ‘money-making’ industry.”

She was busy with work and she didn’t have the time to think about her future.

She thought it was “normal to suffer in my job, in my life.”

Kwan’s dad was fighting cancer and she thought his poor diet might have hurt his health. In Hong Kong, she saw people eating unhealthy junk food.

She realized the importance of what one consumes.

“We have to protect ourselves by raising our awareness of what we put into our bodies.”

In Hong Kong, the opportunity to make career changes seemed limited right after high school.

Kwan came to the U.S. and took an English as a second language class at Mt. San Antonio College, where she took a personality test. Her result pointed toward a “helping” career, like a teacher or a counselor.

"If they want to garden, they can garden. They have the health to do that, instead of staying in bed all day long."

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“I feel like I am a living person, instead of a person who doesn’t have a dream or who doesn’t know what I want to do.”

After taking nutrition courses at Mt. San Antonio College, Kwan plans to work full-time to afford the cost of a master’s degree in nutrition.

“Life is not about how long you live. It’s about the quality, when somebody’s healthy and able to do whatever they want to do. Like if they want to garden, they can garden. They have the health to do that, instead of staying in bed all day long.”

Khaokham enjoyed being a jeweler, having her own creative line and her artistic pieces in galleries.

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Jeweler > geography student

Candace Khaokham enjoyed being a jeweler, having her own creative line and her artistic pieces in galleries. “It was really rewarding and fun stuff, but it’s very taxing on your body and your eyesight because everything is so small.”

She realized she wasn’t earning enough.

“I’m getting older. I need to start thinking about a regular health care plan and savings.”

“I was looking at where people are needed in the future, you know?” A friend said there was a demand for people in the geography profession.

Khaokham attended Pasadena City College “without really knowing what I wanted to do when I started. I took my cultural geography class. I was like, ‘I love this class.’” She liked how geography is a study of “where we are, who’s around us, and how we got here.”

1939 Home Owners Loan Corporation color-coded and rating system of Los Angeles neighborhoods

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At community college in her early 40s, Khaokham excelled with a 3.9 GPA. “I wasn’t a great student in high school or my early teens, but this time I was like I’m gonna do good in school.”

“I wanted to have a job to be kind of helpful too, like if I could make a map that would help with land reclamation, a project on the history of redlining, redistricting, or gerrymandering.”

Adrián Huerta, education professor at University of Southern California

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Truck driver > aspiring occupational therapist

Before he had a stroke, Bladon was working as a truck driver for seven years. The job was stressful. He was working 14-hour days, five days a week, and he neglected his health.

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Before he had a stroke, Barri Bladon was working as a truck driver for seven years. The job was stressful. He was working 14-hour days, five days a week, and he neglected his health. “I ended up ballooning to like 330 pounds.”

“I didn’t have an education beyond high school. Being a truck driver was what I could do to make a decent salary.”

After the stroke, the doctor painted a bleak future for Bladon, pointing to statistics for African Americans. Bladon felt like the doctor was insensitive — his words causing more harm than good. Instead of feeling defeated, Bladon determined to get better.

During his rehabilitation process, he “met some incredible occupational therapists,” and decided to become one himself, starting with going back to school.

After his stroke, during his rehabilitation process, Barri “met some incredible occupational therapists,” and decided to become one himself.

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“I was afraid that I wasn’t gonna be able to make it through school because I hadn’t been in years, especially having a lesion on my brain.” Bladon hadn’t taken a standardized test in years. He had no idea how many courses he might need.

“Once I got through my first semester at El Camino, I felt more confident. I would get confident with each semester.”

He also found confidence by testing out other classes, like in radiology. He says, “Don’t be afraid to try something if you think you might be interested in it, especially at the community college level.”

Bladon wanted to complete his education as fast as possible. He recommends prospective students “do your own research” on what classes are required to transfer to a university — meeting with the university counselor, for example, can help. He met with a few different guidance counselors, but found only one who was particularly helpful, who saved him from taking unnecessary courses.

Bladon’s goal is “as a practitioner, I want to show people of color that there is representation in the field because the majority of the patients that we serve are Black and brown.”

Pamela Hsiung

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Wealth management client associate > aspiring UX/UI designer 

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Pamela Hsiung, who had been working for a wealth management company for seven years, began to work from home.

Pamela started by taking the Sketching for Design class at Pasadena City College.

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“When you’re working remotely, you’re really reduced to just the essence of the work you do. You really just sat with the work.”

“I realized all the fun parts of work were with my co-workers.” Hsiung says she had to make a career change.

As the eldest daughter of immigrant parents, she felt family expectations led her to study finance. Hsiung wanted to pivot and pursue a more creative career in design.

“I did my homework,” she says. “I realized a lot of professors at accredited universities were teaching at community colleges for a fraction of the price.”

She started by taking the Sketching for Design class at Pasadena City College. “In the beginning everyone is really lost, but maybe the second, third week you start to get the handle of thinking a little more creatively. That’s when I realized that as long as I break these steps down into bite-sized pieces, I’ll be able to digest them and inch forward.”

“I was doing something that I really enjoyed and I had never felt that when I was working in finance.” Hsiung liked creating something of her own. 

If Hsiung wasn’t being cautious, “I would love to be in something that was just purely art related.” She says the design field she’s pursuing is “still a business job.”

“I think it’s still scary. I’m not done with my portfolio, and I am moving into a completely different field. I know the tech industry isn’t great right now. I just have to persevere, and I will eventually make it.”

Physical therapy student > chef

“Career change is pretty evident for especially my generation of millennials. We all grew up kind of like on ‘you’re supposed to do this career, stick with it for like 40 plus, 50 years, retire and then that’s it.’ People are realizing you can do so many different things.”

Marie Manalo graduated from Cal State Northridge in kinesiology — the study of human movement — and began a physical therapy program.

“We were doing water exercises with clients. I was standing there holding my client in the water and I was like, ‘wow, I really don’t want to do this. I either make this change now or I commit and figure it out later.’”

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“We were doing water exercises with clients. I was standing there holding my client in the water and I was like, ‘wow, I really don’t want to do this. I either make this change now or I commit and figure it out later.’”

Manalo’s dad had been a sous chef and her grandma’s cooking had a strong influence on her, so she decided to look into culinary school.

Someone told her that L.A. Trade-Tech has a top culinary program. “And I wasn’t going to spend a crap ton of money going to Le Cordon Bleu or something private.”

Manalo’s dad had been a sous chef and her grandma’s cooking had a strong influence on her, so she decided to look into culinary school.

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“It’s really brave to change your career,” Manalo says, adding that not all families encourage people to change course when they choose. Manalo’s mom supported her doing what would make her happy.

The “culinary (industry) is pretty freaking intense, like mentally and physically,” Manalo says. Every day someone would shout or scream at her.

She said she was so focused on learning that she had a set of blinders on and did not notice the inappropriate behavior. She also worked 14 to 16-hour days and went three years without taking a vacation.

Manalo has stepped away from the restaurant industry now. She feels burnt out. “I think people need to understand too as you grow older the way you feel about life is gonna change.”

While the journey was worth it, along the way Manalo learned something about herself that is informing her next steps.

“I thought I was gonna regret changing, but once I was in it, I was in it. Now it’s like 10 plus years later and I still don’t regret.”

“I’m trying to find that, like, unicorn job that has everything — work-life balance, intensity, passion, like all that wrapped into one. And it’s really, really hard right now to find something like that.”

Archaeologist > nurse

Jane Mitchell worked as an archaeologist for nearly a decade.

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“I loved archaeology but I needed to make more money so that I could support myself and the family that I wanted to have one day,” Jane Mitchell says. She worked in the field for nearly a decade.

She considered continuing in archaeology in different ways. Getting a master’s degree and teaching and publishing, or working in a museum, for example.

She weighed the potential outcomes of different routes. Then, she decided to become a nurse.

For her, nursing was “the most practical, stable job you could probably find.” She said she would go from studying human remains to the living.

Making the change was “like jumping off a cliff into the water. ‘Am I really gonna start making this change? Start telling people that I’m totally turning my life around. What am I doing?’”

Making the change was “like jumping off a cliff into the water."

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Classes for nursing can be in high demand, but she enrolled in physiology and anatomy prerequisites at Pasadena City College.

Jane Mitchell

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Mitchell said she was closer to her professor’s age.

“I had to drop any amount of pride I had to ask people sometimes younger than me, ‘how do you do this?’”

At the same time, her life experience gave her confidence to ask questions. “I feel like a lot of students don’t ask questions at all. Maybe they’ll text a question.”

Mitchell says she did tons of research on how to become a nurse.

“Do your research. Make sure you have a clear path of how you’re gonna do it, how long it might take you so you can just be ready for it and not get stressed out about surprises along the way.”

How we made this story

This story was originally written and illustrated as a physical zine. The zine includes everything captured in this story: Advice from career counselors, questions to ask yourself when considering a career change, and hand-painted illustrations.

Want to learn more about how we put this together? Check out our Medium post.

If you have any questions about the project, or would like to learn about other print products related to higher education we have available, please reach out to associate engagement producer Adriana Pera at apera@scpr.org.

L.A. city leaders will discuss on Wednesday whether to pull hundreds of millions of dollars out of the regional homelessness agency and assign different oversight.

L.A. County supervisors voted to withdraw funding for the L.A. Homeless Services Authority last April, citing ongoing problems with the agency's oversight of homelessness funds.

Now 10 months later, City Council members are planning to talk about whether to pull the city’s funds from LAHSA — which amount to just under $300 million this fiscal year.

It’s one of the most consequential decisions on homelessness city officials have faced in years. In deciding the future of LAHSA, the City Council will be deciding who will be entrusted with taxpayer funds meant to address the nation’s largest unsheltered homeless population.

What the council will discuss

On Wednesday, the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee is scheduled to discuss a range of options that include:

• not changing anything major
• keeping the city money at LAHSA, but beefing up city oversight
• shifting the funding from LAHSA to direct city control
• shifting the city’s funding from LAHSA to the county homelessness department to administer it

The committee also is scheduled to discuss whether to pursue shifting the city’s federal homelessness funding from LAHSA to more direct city control.

The options were first laid out in a staff report to delivered last April, two years after it was requested by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.

At a City Council meeting in January, Rodriguez criticized housing and homelessness committee chair Nithya Raman for not scheduling a committee discussion on the options.

“It's been sitting [for] 280 days, a report in your committee that you won't hear,” Rodriguez said at the January meeting. “So let's stop playing this false notion of the arsonists showing up as the firefighters.”

Asked for a response Monday, Raman’s spokesperson Stella Stahl told LAist the item is on Wednesday's agenda.

In a statement, Raman said she expects to hold two meetings to discuss all the city’s options before the council makes a decision.

Raman and Mayor Karen Bass urged the county not to pull funding from LAHSA last spring, saying the agency was making progress on homelessness.

The supervisors went ahead last April with their decision to withdraw the more than $300 million in annual county funding from the agency.

The vast majority of county funds will be shifted from LAHSA starting July 1.

Raman recently announced she’s running in the June primary against Bass, whom she previously endorsed for re-election.

LAHSA is in ‘crisis,’ its CEO says

LAHSA was created by the city and county in 1993 to oversee homeless services. It’s governed by a CEO who reports to a commission of 10 members. Half of the members are appointed by the L.A. mayor, and the other half by each of the five county supervisors. Bass also serves on the commission, having appointed herself in fall 2023.

While it’s long faced criticism, it’s been under particularly close scrutiny for more than a year.

An audit and court-ordered review found it failed to properly track its spending and whether services were being provided.

LAHSA also has been facing criticism more recently for months-long delays in paying tens of millions of dollars to reimburse service providers — a problem officials vowed to fix nearly two years ago. Several providers recently told LAist they've had had to dip into reserves or take on debt.

While addressing the commission that oversees the organization on Friday, CEO O’Neill said LAHSA was “in crisis. And I say this not as a criticism to any of our really hardworking staff. They've built what they were asked to build.”

LAHSA’s staff report to “essentially 21 elected bosses, all of whom have different, sometimes conflicting agendas,” O’Neill said. “This creates a structure that is unstable.”

“LAHSA has been structured for decades as the entity that takes the blame,” she added. “Political incentive…has been to point at LAHSA rather than to address structural issues.”

“Morale is very low,” O’Neill said of LAHSA staff.

Fifteen years ago, when modern electric vehicles were just hitting the road, no one knew exactly what to expect from their giant, expensive lithium-ion batteries.

As batteries age, they hold less and less energy. Anyone who's ever had a dying smartphone, or had to replace a vehicle's 12-volt starter battery, knows this painfully well.

EV batteries were intended to last longer than those smaller, cheaper batteries. But how much longer?

The predictions were not soothing. In 2010, the New York Times wrote that "estimates of [EV] battery packs' lifespan — no one knows for sure — range upward from seven years." The average car on the road is more than 12 years old. And that discrepancy made some would-be EV buyers nervous.

Batteries come with warranties, but they don't last as long as the car. If a high-voltage battery chokes out midway through a car's life, it needs replacing — at a price tag that can run in the ballpark of $5,000 to $20,000.

But there's good news.

As the fleet of EVs on the road ages, new data pooled from tens of thousands of vehicles is showing those batteries are lasting longer than expected.

How a battery ages 

Lithium-ion batteries undergo two kinds of aging. First, there's calendar aging: They degrade as time goes on, holding less juice, even if they just sit in storage.

Then there's cyclical aging, which is how much a battery degrades based on its use — being charged and discharged, over and over again.

That means there's no way to dodge degradation. Whether you use a vehicle a lot or a little, eventually, the battery will hold less energy.

But the trajectory of aging isn't a straight line. Recurrent, a research firm that pulls in data from over 30,000 EV drivers, describes it as an "S curve." There's a rapid decline at the beginning, a long leveling off, and then a more rapid decline at the end.

"It's very much like breaking in a pair of shoes," says Liz Najman, the director of market insights at Recurrent. The shoes start out stiff, but quickly get a little more give. "And then your shoes just last you," she says, until at some point, "It's all over, it's a rapid decline."

And when it comes to EV batteries, two things are becoming clear. The initial drop-off is not as severe as some people had worried. And the sharp end-of-life decline is taking a long, long time to materialize.

At auto auctions, a lot of healthy batteries

Adam George is a vehicle services director at Cox Automotive, which runs used car auctions around the country. In recent years, the number of used EVs for sale has increased enormously — reflecting the sharp rise in production a few years ago.

That's given Cox Automotive a growing pool of used EVs to evaluate before they're re-sold.

"We were expecting battery health to be experiencing mass degradation over the first one to three years of owning a vehicle," George says. "What we have seen, though, is that these 2, 3, 4-year-old off-lease cars that are coming back have battery health scores well upwards of 95%."

Recurrent's data also shows that cars from most major brands retain 95% or more of their expected range after 3 years, thanks in part to software and battery management systems that are designed to correct for the battery's early degradation, and give drivers consistent range.

So the initial drop-off in that S curve is in the range of 5% or so, give or take. After that? Well, Cox Automotive has tested nearly 80,000 EVs, and found an average battery health of 92%.

Decade-old EVs are overwhelmingly on their original batteries 

That data set is naturally skewed toward younger vehicles, because the vast majority of EVs on the road today are fairly new. There were only a million EVs sold between 2010 and 2018, and now there are more than a million sold each year.

So what about the oldest EVs, specifically?

Recurrent's data can help answer this question. Najman, a data scientist, notes a few caveats: It's a fairly small dataset, just because there weren't many EVs built more than a decade ago. And some of the oldest EVs use technology that can't connect to Recurrent's opt-in network.

But based on their community, among EVs that are 10 years old or older, only 8.5% have ever had a battery replacement. More than 90% of them are still on their original battery.

"EV batteries are holding up phenomenally well," Najman says.  

Recurrent has also looked at EVs of any age that have more than 150,000 miles on them, which provides a closer look at the effects of that cyclical aging. There, too, the batteries outperformed expectations.

"Cars with 150,000 miles or more, and that have not had battery replacements, are getting at least 83% of their original range," Najman says.

Now, there is one common reason why EV batteries will be replaced very early on: a defect. There have been multiple large-scale battery recalls, and any individual battery might have a flaw that requires replacement. But because all new EVs come with warranties, that kind of replacement isn't a financial blow to owners.

"That would be something that would be synonymous with, like, your engine or a transmission going bad," says Adam George, of Cox Automotive. "That's what warranties are for."

EV battery warranties typically cover at least 8 years and 100,000 miles, and automakers will replace the battery in the case of catastrophic failure, or a reduction in capacity (usually to 70% of the original or less).

A robotic arm displays the dual engine chassis of a Model S electric sedan at the Hawthorne Airport in Los Angeles on October 9, 2014.

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The tale of one Model S 

What do all these stats look like in real life? Consider Norman Hajjar's Model S.

Hajjar was an early adopter of electric vehicles. He kind of had to be: In 2013 he became an executive at the electric vehicle drivers' app Plugshare.

His 2012 Model S is one of the first that Tesla ever built. When he got it, he was well aware of the question mark about battery lifespan. "There was really no way of knowing what the future held for it because there was zero track record," Hajjar says.

In his case, the future held a battery defect: a loud noise followed by his car coming to an abrupt stop. He recalls Tesla replacing the battery — free of charge and under warranty — in 2014.

Since then, he's spent 12 years on that second battery. He's put around 200,000 miles on the car overall. And it's driving great, thank you very much.

"This vehicle still is a monster," Hajjar says, affectionately. "It is extremely fast, quick off the line."

The vehicle was originally rated to have 265 miles of range. Now it has about 220. Do the math, and it's at 83% of its original capacity. "The amount of degradation is pretty minor," Hajjar says.

Hajjar has moved on to a newer vehicle for his daily driver, mostly to enjoy higher-tech features. (His newer Model Y has Tesla's advanced driver-assistance software.) His son uses the Model S these days for his commute to college. "It's just sort of a backup vehicle now," Hajjar says. But he plans to hang on to it. He's sentimental about it, he says.

Why are batteries outlasting expectations? 

The engineers who developed modern EVs knew that prolonging battery life would be crucial. They designed systems to actively manage temperatures to improve battery lifespan, and software to constantly check battery health. Years have shown those efforts paid off.

But there's another reason EV batteries have out-performed expectations. It turns out that testing batteries is harder on them than the real world. Their lifespan was underestimated.

Simona Onori's lab at Stanford University has done research into the longevity of lithium-ion batteries, including a 2024 paper in Nature Energy showing that traditional methods for testing battery life are very stressful, and don't match the way batteries are actually used.

In most lab tests, researchers repeatedly cycle them from a very high state of charge to a very low one.

Real-world driving is gentler, with stops and starts — each start draws a bit of the battery's energy down, while each stop gives it a little time to recharge. A driver would never slam the accelerator to the floor and keep it there until the battery is dead.

"We accelerate, we decelerate," Onori says. "The battery will be charged, and discharged, some rest if you're at a traffic light."

Her lab's findings suggest that the traditional tests for battery life were unrealistically challenging, and Onori says ongoing work with real-world data is now confirming that. When they're actually driven, she says, EV batteries "age gracefully. Very gracefully."

Just like humans, she notes: "When we live a life with less stress, we live longer."

A decade plus … and counting 

So how long do EV batteries last? It's still too soon to put a precise number on it, because — as a group — the cars already on the road haven't yet reached the end of the S-curve, the point when they will start to show massive performance declines. In other words, they're not dead yet.

Meanwhile, battery technology keeps improving. The oldest EVs, like Hajjar's Model S, may not be the best indicator of how long newer EVs will last. Software systems to manage batteries have gotten more sophisticated. A lot of new EVs use a different battery chemistry — lithium iron phosphate or LFP — which lasts even longer than other lithium-ion batteries.

As Stephanie Valdez-Streaty, who follows EV trends for Cox Automotive, puts it: "These batteries are built to outlast the cars."

And there's one more wrinkle when it comes to figuring out the end of life for a normally-aging EV battery. They don't die abruptly, like an old engine cutting out. It's more that their range shrinks; they can only hold enough energy for shorter and shorter trips. Instead of shelling out for an expensive battery replacement, some EV owners might just put up with that limitation.

Thomas McVeigh, of Ontario, Canada, drives a 2014 BMW i3. That vehicle didn't have an impressive range even when it was new, and now it can only manage about 55 miles on a single charge in the winter. But it still looks great. It's pleasant to drive. It saves him on gas. Maintenance is wildly cheap for a 12-year-old vehicle, and especially for a BMW; his only real cost is new tires.

He's fine with its diminished range. And he's not inclined to put what he estimates would be a $6,000 battery into an aging car. Instead, maybe he'll pass it on to his kid. "Teenagers generally aren't going for long drives," he says.

Or maybe he'll keep it for himself, after all. "I mean," he says, "I love that car."

Copyright 2026 NPR

This week the Getty Villa Museum will begin offering a rare look at scrolls from its ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead” collection.

The collection of 19 manuscripts written on scrolls of papyrus and linen fragments are fragile, with one of them dating back nearly 3,500 years. Because of that, the materials are not usually on display to the public and the gallery will be carefully lit, temperature and humidity-controlled.

Sara Cole, associate curator of antiquities, told LAist that a lot of the language in the spells is written in first person speech for the deceased spirit to say while navigating the afterlife.

“One of my favorite phrases that I have on a wall of the gallery is ‘May I join with the stars that call out to me in the night boat,’” Cole said.

Cole explained that the manuscripts have been in the Getty’s collection since 1983, when they were donated by a bookseller in New York, who got them from the private collection of a British rare manuscript collector.

Egyptian mummy wrapping of Petosiris, Son of Tetosiris, from around 332–100 BCE.

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A years-long project is underway to translate the spells and rituals immortalized in the Getty's “Book of the Dead” scrolls and fragments, with a “large publication” in the works, Cole said.

The exhibition will feature four papyri belonging to women named Webennesre, Ankhesenaset, and Aset. Cole said “Book of the Dead” materials belonging to women are rare, because most were reserved for men.

Twelve of the manuscripts in the exhibition are written on fragments of linen that were used to wrap the mummified remains of the people they belonged to. Cole said she hopes visitors will understand that the material was very intimately associated with peoples’ burials.

Cole said her goal is to foreground the identities of the people who owned the scrolls, including two women who were ritual singers for the god Amun in the ancient city of Thebes.

“We see in these manuscripts the ancient Egyptians really grappling with this question and thinking about what might happen when we die... And I think that’s something we can all connect with and understand,” she said.

Cole recommends visiting the Getty’s website for a calendar of curator tours and special events related to the exhibition, including an upcoming talk by an Egyptologist.

The “The Egyptian Book of the Dead” at the Getty Villa runs from March 4 to Nov. 30.

The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in an important gun case that has united an array of strange bedfellows, from conservative gun rights groups to liberal civil liberties groups. At issue is a federal law making it a crime for drug users to possess a firearm. It's the same law that was used to prosecute then-President Joe Biden's son for illegal gun possession — only this case involves marijuana use and gun ownership.

The briefs in the case present diametrically different versions of the facts. On one side, the Trump administration portrays Ali Danial Hemani as a drug dealer and someone with terrorist ties and a marijuana habit. Importantly, he is not being prosecuted for any of those offenses, however. Rather, the government has charged Hemani with violating a federal gun law that bars people with drug addiction from possession of firearms, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the indictment, declaring that the federal law violates Hemani's Second Amendment right to own a gun.

The Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that because Hemani admitted to FBI agents that he used marijuana several times a week, he is a "persistent" drug user, thus rendering illegal the possession of the gun he bought legally and keeps securely in his home.

Hemani's lawyer, law professor Naz Ahmad of the City University of New York, paints a very different picture of her client. Hemani, she notes, was born and raised in Texas, "attended high school there, played on the high school football team, attended the University of Texas at Arlington, was an honor student there" and is "a really valued member of his local religious community."

"The Second Amendment doesn't support disarming and prosecuting somebody for mere possession of a firearm if they happen to have used marijuana occasionally," she says.

"That's a mismatch," she adds, especially at a time when 40 states, to one degree or another, have legalized marijuana use.
 
If the court rules against Hemani, she says, "the statute could apply to anybody. It could apply to somebody who uses like a marijuana sleep gummy."

The Trump administration's advocate, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, acknowledges that under the Supreme Court's landmark gun decision four years ago, the government has a heavy burden to show that modern-day gun laws are analogous to laws in place at the nation's founding. But he contends that the statute used to prosecute Hemani is both justified and analogous to founding-era laws and practices.

Specifically, in his Supreme Court brief, Sauer points to the harsh punishments imposed during the founding era on "habitual drunkards." And he contends that both Congress and the states have restricted firearm possession by illegal drug users "for as long as that social evil has plagued America."

That said, for the most part, the case seems to have united groups from left to right, from civil liberties groups to gun rights advocates.

"It's outrageous that they tried to get him on a marijuana gun charge," says Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America. He contends that the government is seeking to criminalize conduct that was widely tolerated at the founding.

"It was the universal custom of founding-era militias to imbibe," he notes, adding that Thomas Jefferson and other famous Americans "possessed firearms while being users of drugs ranging from opium to cocaine."

At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum are a variety of gun-safety groups that fear that if Hemani wins his case, it could gouge a hole in the existing system of national background checks.

Under the current system, dealers are required to first clear the sale by submitting the buyer's name to the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The hitch is that there is a very small window in which to complete the check — just three days. And gun-safety groups say that anything that makes the rules more complicated and unclear could really screw up the system.

"We're saying" to the court, "whatever you do, it's essential that you keep the rules clear so that in that short window, federal agencies can give a quick answer to the dealers," says Douglas Letter of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. 

An adverse ruling, he says, would mess up the criminal background check process. That, in turn, would result in "so many, particularly women and children, who will die if that kind of a system is not in place."

A decision in the case is expected by summer.
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