US appeals court rejects challenge to federal marijuana ban
BOSTON, May 27 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday rejected arguments by several Massachusetts cannabis businesses that the federal prohibition on marijuana could no longer be deemed constitutional, as the U.S. Supreme Court held two decades ago.
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, opens new tab that changes in how marijuana is regulated and sold in the decades since the Supreme Court upheld the law in 2005 did not mean the federal ban was no longer constitutional.
Lawyers for the cannabis businesses including prominent litigator David Boies had argued that Congress has abandoned its goal of controlling all marijuana in interstate commerce, which they said was a key predicate of the Supreme Court's holding.
In that case, Gonzales v. Raich, the high court held that under the U.S. Constitution's Commerce Clause, Congress had the authority to criminalize the possession and use of marijuana even in states that permit its use for medical purposes as it did in the Controlled Substances Act.
Today, 38 states, including Massachusetts, have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, and under the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendments that have been included in annual appropriation bills since 2014, the Justice Department may not spend funds to interfere with state medical marijuana laws.
Boies during arguments in December also pointed to Congress' decision in 2010 to permit medical marijuana in the District of Columbia.
But Chief U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron, writing for a three-judge panel, said that the so-called appropriations rider was of "limited scope" and did not apply to the cultivation and distribution of marijuana for non-medical purposes.
"After all, notwithstanding those appropriation riders, the CSA remains fully intact as to the regulation of the commercial activity involving marijuana for non-medical purposes, which is the activity in which the appellants, by their own account, are engaged," he wrote.
He said that a ruling for the plaintiffs would result in a nationwide exemption to the Controlled Substances Act's comprehensive drug regulatory regime that was far broader than the one the Supreme Court rejected in the 2005 case, which concerned only medicinal marijuana sales, not recreational uses.
Jonathan Schiller, a lawyer for the plaintiffs at Boies Schiller Flexner, said it "is fair to assume that we shall seek Supreme Court review."
The lawsuit was filed in 2023 by Massachusetts retailer Canna Provisions, marijuana delivery business owner Gyasi Sellers, grower Wiseacre Farm and publicly traded multistate operator Verano Holdings (VRNO.NLB), opens new tab.
U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, last year rejected their arguments, saying only the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn its 2005 ruling upholding the law.
The plaintiffs say that holding has been undercut by subsequent developments. In 2021, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the 2005 ruling's reasoning may no longer apply and that the ban "may no longer be necessary or proper", in response to the court's decision not to hear a different case.
The Justice Department during the last year of Democratic President Joe Biden's tenure moved to make marijuana use a less serious federal crime by reclassifying it as a Schedule III drug instead of Schedule I, which is reserved for drugs with a high potential for abuse.
The fate of that proposal remains uncertain. Republican President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Terry Cole, has declined to commit to rescheduling cannabis, saying only that he would "give the matter careful consideration."
The case is Canna Provisions Inc v Garland, 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-1628.
For the plaintiffs: David Boies and Jonathan Schiller of Boies Schiller Flexner
For the U.S.: Daniel Aguilar of the U.S. Department of Justice
Read more:
US appeals court skeptical of challenge to federal marijuana ban
Cannabis businesses lose court challenge to US marijuana ban
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