
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected 6-2 on Mar. 21 a lawsuit brought by Nebraska and Oklahoma against Colorado’s legalization of both medical and recreational marijuana.
The suit, brought by the states’ attorneys, argued that Colorado’s legalization and regulation of marijuana pressured and undermined their own law enforcement. “The State of Colorado authorizes, oversees, protects, and profits from a sprawling $100-million-per-month marijuana growing, processing, and retailing organization that exported thousands of pounds of marijuana to some 36 States in 2014. If this entity were based south of our border, the federal government would prosecute it as a drug cartel,” the states’ Jan. 5 supplemental brief explains.
Refusing to hear the case doesn’t stop the suit, however. Oklahoma and Nebraska would be able to take the case through the usual channels of a federal district court to decide, according to law experts with the Denver Post. For this request, the states had asked the court to hear the case as an “original” argument, bypassing lower courts in matters of interstate dispute. Representatives of the states themselves haven’t spoken on whether or not they will proceed.
“Today, the Supreme Court has not held that Colorado’s unconstitutional facilitation of marijuana industrialization is legal,” says Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson in a statement, “and the Court’s decision does not bar additional challenges to Colorado’s scheme in federal district court.”
Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman says in a statement she is proud of her team in defending Colorado’s laws.
“I continue to believe that this lawsuit was not the way to properly address the challenges posed by legalized marijuana,” she says. “But the problems are not going away. Although we’ve had victories in several federal lawsuits over the last month, the legal questions surrounding Amendment 64 still require stronger leadership from Washington.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented with the rejection, with Thomas writing in the dissenting opinion, “The plaintiff states have alleged significant harms to their sovereign interests caused by another state. We should let this complaint proceed further rather than denying leave without so much as a word of explanation.”
Although the rejection doesn’t end the case, cannabis proponents like Mason Tvert, director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, are calling it “the right decision.”
“States have every right to regulate the cultivation and sale of marijuana, just as Nebraska and Oklahoma have the right to maintain their failed prohibition policies. Colorado has done more to control marijuana than just about any other state in the nation,” he says.