Supreme Court Declines To Hear Case On Scope Of Federal Medical Marijuana Protections

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear a Maine man’s appeal that sought to clarify the boundaries of a federal law that protects state-legal medical marijuana activity from prosecution by the federal government.

After discussing the matter late last week, justices on Monday denied the petition from lawyers for Lucas Sirois, who had asserted that the amendment—which has been enacted into federal law via spending bills since late 2014—should prevent the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors from pursuing their case against him.

Sirois was charged in 2021 with “a laundry list of offenses” stemming from his business as a licensed medical marijuana provider, his petition says. Since his arrest, he’s protested that the prosecution is violation of the so-called Rohrabacher–Farr rider, named after the lawmakers who sponsored it, which prevents DOJ from spending money “to prevent [states with legal medical marijuana] from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

In the Supreme Court petition, filed in February, Sirois’s lawyers argued that “the government’s actions in this case violate Rohrabacher-Farr resulting in DOJ spending funds not appropriated by Congress. Therefore, DOJ’s actions were invalid and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit must be reversed.”

The petition noted that there’s currently a split between First Circuit and Ninth Circuit courts with respect to the marijuana budget rider. Such conflicts typically increase the likelihood that the Supreme Court will weigh in.

“This case presents an opportunity for the Court to resolve the circuit split and provide a definitive interpretation of Congress’s language,” the petition said, contending that justices “can settle the substantial uncertainty that exists related to the protections afforded to the medical marijuana patients, distributors, cultivators, and regulators pursuant to the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment.”

Notably, lawyers for the federal government did not so much as respond to the Supreme Court petition. In early March, they waived their right to respond to the appeal.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit previously ruled against Sirois, a ruling that will remain in place following the high court’s decision not to hear the case.

Sirois obtained a medical marijuana caregiver license in Maine in 2010 and later obtained a historical building in Farmington that he converted into a cannabis cultivation facility, according to his petition. Individual caregivers rented rooms in the building and sold marijuana at wholesale prices to Sirois’s business, Lakemont LLC, which then sold it to patients.

In 2018, a suspect in a separate investigation mentioned Sirois as someone “with an extremely large grow operation,” the petition said, prompting DOJ to open an investigation. In 2020, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided the facility, with an agent claiming in his application for a search warrant that the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment “does not apply [because] members of the conspiracy traffic in both marijuana and cocaine.”

Though no evidence of cocaine-related conduct was ever found, the petition asserted, the federal government filed charges “related to his cultivation and distribution of marijuana under the CSA.”

Despite Sirois raising the Rohrabacher–Farr defense, the trial court ruled against him, concluding that a “reasonable mind” might agree that DOJ’s investigation of him was warranted because of his apparent noncompliance with a 2011 state law prohibiting medical marijuana “collectives.” (Sirois argued that his conduct fell outside the technical definition of collectives and involved only “permissible, non-collective arrangements and activities,” noting that state regulators did not find him to be in violation of state regulations during the DOJ investigation.)

Sirois appealed the ruling to the First Circuit, which eventually sided with the government and affirmed the district court ruling.

In its opinion, the First Circuit said that “the party seeking an injunction pursuant to the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment bears the burden of demonstrating that the challenged DOJ action would ‘prevent a state from giving practical effect to its medical marijuana laws.’” Further, it said evidence in the case “tended to show” that Sirois was in fact operating as a collective in violation of Maine’s own regulations.

Sirois had argued to the Supreme Court that the First Circuit ruling hinged on “two critical errors.”

“First, it required the defendant to, essentially, prove his or her innocence instead of making the government prove that its investigation and prosecution had continued justification sufficient to expend appropriated funds,” his filing said.

Additionally, the court “failed to define the contours of that standard or provide appreciable guidance to criminal defendants as to how to demonstrate such ‘substantial compliance,’” the petition said

Lawyers for Sirois called that outcome “not tenable,” writing in the brief: “Current and prospective participants in Maine’s medical marijuana program deserve clarity as to what showing must be made to establish substantial compliance.”

According to the petition, the questions presented to the Supreme Court were threefold. First, “under what circumstances may the Department of Justice criminally investigate and prosecute an individual who is licensed or otherwise authorized to use, distribute, possess, or cultivate medical marijuana?” Second, is it the responsibility of the government or the defendant to demonstrate noncompliance or compliance, respectively, with state medical marijuana laws and regulations? And third, what is the proper test to demonstrate either strict or substantial compliance?

The case is Sirois v. U.S. Denial of the petition for writ of certiorari was first reported by Law360.

In an October op-ed for Marijuana Moment, attorney Christine Baily, who previously served as the first general counsel of the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, said the First Circuit decision in the case “underscores the challenges criminal defendants will confront in convincing federal district courts that they should issue an injunction against prosecutors.”

“Criminal defendants must demonstrate substantial compliance with state medical marijuana laws and regulations, but possession of a license alone will likely be insufficient,” she wrote at the time, adding that it’s also “unlikely that state regulators will testify or provide evidence supporting compliance even if the agency issued, renewed or reinstated a license or determined that the licensee passed inspection during the time of the alleged CSA violations.”

In December, meanwhile, a First Circuit panel heard oral arguments in a case that cuts to the heart of federal marijuana prohibition, with plaintiffs contending that the U.S. government in recent years has abandoned its attempts to rein in what it still considers a federally illegal substance, citing as evidence the Rohrabacher–Farr budget rider.

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