The federal appeals court rejected an argument by state-legal marijuana businesses seeking to reverse the U.S. Government’s marijuana prohibition, affirming the dismissal of the lawsuit in a lower court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit published an opinion Tuesday in which it stated that the businesses had no right to sell or cultivate cannabis despite the fact the the federal Controlled Substances Act was not enforced against states with licensed cannabis markets.
Chief Judge David Barron wrote: “The appellants reasoning would mean that residents would have a right to cultivate and sell products that laws from the founding period encouraged them to do so.” He added, “We refuse to adopt an argument that supports” this conclusion.
The high-profile lawsuit—originally filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Western Division, by multi-state operator Verano Holdings Corp. and the Massachusetts-based cannabis businesses Canna Provisions and Wiseacre Farm, along with Treevit CEO Gyasi Sellers—argued that government’s ongoing prohibition on marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) was unconstitutional because Congress in recent decades had “dropped any assumption that federal control of state-regulated marijuana is necessary.”
In their first appeal, the companies stated that Congress had abandoned its goal of eradicating cannabis and, in actuality, exempted marijuana from federal enforcement under certain conditions. The firms referred to policies such as a congressional budget ridership which prevents federal funding from being used in order to interfere with medical marijuana state laws as well the federal lawmakers decision to permit the legalization of marijuana in District of Columbia.
The law firms Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and Lesser, Newman, Aleo & Nasser LLP represent plaintiffs in the case. David Boies is the chairman of the former law firm. His clients include the Justice Department, Al Gore, the plaintiffs of a lawsuit that invalidated California’s same-sex marriage ban, and others.
At oral argument on appeal late last year, Boies told judges that under the Constitution, Congress can only regulate commercial activity within a state—in this case, around marijuana—if the failure to regulate that in-state activity “would substantially interfere [with] You can undermine the legitimate legislative regulation You can also read more about it here.State commerce
The judges, on the other hand, were not convinced, ruling that the CSA is still in full force as it relates to commercial marijuana use for non-medical reasons, an activity which, according to their own accounts, the appellants are involved in.
The ruling upholds an earlier district court decision issued last summer.
This ruling said, while there are “persuasive arguments for a reexamination of the current schedule of cannabis”, its hands were tied by U.S. Supreme Court precedence dictating that the federal authority is to regulate controlled drugs even within state boundaries.
From the start of the lawsuit, the plaintiffs indicated that they intended to take the matter all the way up to the Supreme Court to try to convince the justices of today to reverse prior precedents from before the federal government started making exceptions for enforcement of prohibitions in states where marijuana is legal.
At oral argument on appeal, the panel’s questions focused largely on what legal precedent Boies had for asserting that the government’s selective hands-off approach around certain aspects of marijuana regulation—for example allowing state medical markets to proceed under the so-called Rohrabacher–Farr budget rider or permitting Washington, D.C. to engage in medical cannabis sales—meant it forfeited all authority to prohibit the drug more broadly.
In the new opinion, judges wrote that “we know of no authority—and the appellants identify none—that supports the proposition that an activity not otherwise protected as a fundamental right under the Due Process Clause may become so protected solely because many states have in recent times provided legislative protections for that activity.”
The previous district court ruling determined that marijuana companies had the right to sue.
The decision states that “Plaintiffs allege they engage in various activities, including cultivation, manufacturing, distribution and possession of cannabis, all within Massachusetts, which is a violation of the CSA.” The court concluded that Plaintiffs, in the absence any disputes regarding redressability or standing to contest the parts of the CSA which apply to intrastate cannabis activities have shown they are entitled to do so under Article III.
The opinion states that “the court finds plaintiffs have also shown there is a connection causal between their economic damages and the CSA.” The detailed claims of financial injury made by Plaintiffs meet this burden when credited. The final causal link is the decision of a specific third party, but the actual economic harm comes from the thousands of decisions similar to those made by other third parties in response to the CSA.
Nonetheless, the district court sided with the government in its motion to dismiss based on a failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted—a stance affirmed in Tuesday’s appeals court ruling.
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