5 ‘Aggrieved Persons’ Sue Trump, DOJ Over Cannabis Rescheduling Order

The third and final legal challenge to the Trump administration’s Schedule III cannabis order was filed May 28 – the final day of a 30-day window from the order’s publication in the Federal Register.

A coalition of five anti-rescheduling parties filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, arguing that they have standing as persons who are “aggrieved” by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s signed order to immediately reclassify state-licensed medical cannabis and FDA-approved products containing cannabis or cannabis extracts from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

“Petitioners satisfy the requirements of Article III standing because each has suffered or will imminently suffer a concrete and particularized injury in fact that is fairly traceable to the final order and redressable by a favorable decision of this court,” the petition states. “Each petitioner’s interests fall within the zone of interests protected by the CSA and the [Administrative Procedure Act] APA.”

The five petitioners include:

1. New Directions Addiction Recovery Services, a substance abuse recovery clinic and retreat center located in McHenry County, Ill.
2. Kenneth Finn, M.D., a physician who practices comprehensive pain medicine in Prescott, Ariz.
3. Elizabeth “Libby” B. Stuyt, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist who holds a Colorado medical license.
4. Cannabis Industry Victims Educating Litigators (CIVEL), a cannabis industry victims’ advocacy organization that educates lawyers on how to hold the industry accountable for matters related to cannabis injuries, such as psychosis or suicide.
5. MMJ International Holdings (MMJ), a private pharmaceutical cannabinoid development company, whose subsidiary holds an active DEA Schedule I analytical laboratory registration.

“The final order directly and concretely injures MMJ by creating a regulatory double standard that rewards state-market marijuana operators who operated outside the federal Controlled Substances Act while penalizing federally compliant pharmaceutical developers like MMJ that invested millions in the FDA pathway, DEA registration and pharmaceutical manufacturing controls,” the petition states. “The final order’s expedited registration pathway for state licensees effectively bypasses the rigorous public-interest standards, criminal-history requirements and diversion-prevention controls that DEA imposed on pharmaceutical applicants like MMJ, constituting a competitive injury cognizable under Article III.”

Finn, meanwhile, had been named as a designated participant under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) now-vacated administrative law judge hearing that was granted by former Administrator Anne Milgram.

Former DEA Administrative Law Judge John J. Mulrooney II, now retired, found that Finn “raised issues related to his pain management practice where he claims that he will be adversely affected by the promulgation of the” proposed Schedule III rule under President Joe Biden’s administration, according to the May 28 petition.

According to the petition, the Trump DOJ’s scheduling order “directly and concretely injures Dr. Finn by requiring him, as a practitioner seeking to prescribe cannabis products to his patients for pain management, to do so without the benefit of the standardized dosing protocols, package inserts, drug interaction data, and FDA-approved labeling that ordinarily accompany Schedule III controlled substances – but which are absent in the final order.”

In addition to naming President Donald Trump as a respondent, the petition names Blanche and current DEA Administrator Terrance Cole.

In the background section of the petition, the five anti-rescheduling parties targeted Trump’s December 2025 signed order that directed his administration to loosen restrictions on cannabis, arguing that Howard Kessler, a billionaire entrepreneur and philanthropist, provided the president with “his own experience” mitigating the effects of chemotherapy to drive the rescheduling decision without consideration of the administrative process.

According to the petitioners, the final order has “immediate and sweeping consequences,” including:

• The elimination of the deduction disallowance imposed by 26 U.S.C. § 280E for state-licensed cannabis businesses;
• The creation of a novel, bifurcated federal scheduling framework never contemplated by Congress;
• The effective federal “endorsement” of state medical cannabis programs that have never undergone FDA approval; and
• The “reduction of federal controls” on cannabis products in a manner that will foreseeably increase cannabis availability and use.

This petition for review follows similar, but less detailed, petitions filed by the prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association (NDASA) on May 4; and by the state attorneys general from Nebraska, Indiana and Louisiana on May 22.

Editor’s note: Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill asked the D.C. Circuit on May 29 to dismiss Louisiana as a petitioner in the proceedings, leaving only Nebraska and Indiana.

The D.C. Circuit clerk ordered all three petitions – from May 4, 22 and 28 – be consolidated under the same case.

Although the petitions for review serve as forerunners to more thorough legal arguments that will be filed in opening briefs by each of the three coalitions under the consolidated case, the latest petition by New Directions, CIVEL, MMJ and the two doctors outlines 13 issues that will be “developed fully” in the parties’ future brief.

According to the petition, the five anti-rescheduling parties plan to argue whether:

1. Blanche acted beyond the powers of his authority in the order;
2. The order was unlawful because it creates a hybrid schedule not authorized by Congress;
3. The order is arbitrary and capricious because the DOJ failed to “adequately consider” cannabis’s health risks;
4. The order is arbitrary and capricious because the DOJ failed to provide FDA-quality indication, dosing, risk-benefit, delivery, and monitoring systems and guidance and other information to physicians;
5. The order is arbitrary and capricious because it relies on state medical cannabis licensing programs that “do not satisfy the ‘adequate safeguards’” required by the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs;
6. The order is arbitrary and capricious because it lacks any rational evidentiary basis for its implicit determination that marijuana as dispensed under state medical marijuana programs constitutes an effective medical treatment;
7. The order was issued without observance of procedure required by law, in violation of the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements;
8. The order deprived petitioners of procedural due process by circumventing their statutory right to a hearing on the record;
9. The order violates the major questions doctrine under West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697 (2022), because the acting attorney general used the ancillary treaty-implementation provision of § 811(d)(1) to accomplish a decision of vast economic and political significance;
10. The order violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause by creating a novel, condition-based scheduling framework that treats chemically identical marijuana products differently;
11. The order contravenes the United States’ obligations under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs;
12. The order is unlawful under Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 144 S. Ct. 2244 (2024), because the acting attorney general’s contested interpretation of § 811(d)(1) cannot survive de novo judicial review; and
13. The order is unlawful because it was issued under the authority of an administrative structure that the Department of Justice itself has conceded violates the separation of powers and Article II of the Constitution.

The petitioners asked the D.C. Circuit to stay the effectiveness of the order, declare it unlawful and arbitrary and capricious, and to vacate the order in its entirety.

As part of its standing statement, New Directions claimed that “rescheduling will foreseeably increase the availability and social acceptability of marijuana, undermining New Directions’ organizational mission to assist individuals in overcoming substance abuse, including cannabis use disorder, and diverting organizational resources to address increased marijuana-related harm among its patient population.”