Marijuana Prohibition Will be Ruled Unconstitutional in California This Month.

ABCDriveronline

On March 25th to be exact. That’s the date Judge Mueller of the Sacramento Division of United States District Court for the Eastern District of California will announce her verdict for United States v. Schweder. The case that will determine the constitutionality of cannabis’s Schedule I status, which currently puts it in the same category as heroin.

This is the first of many steps to fully legalize cannabis. Once the verdict is issued it will be appealed by whichever side loses and go to the 9th circuit court of appeals. If upheld, it will apply to the states that are part of the 9th circuit (west coast) and if appealed from there it goes to the US Supreme Court which of course applies to the whole country.

John Balazs is an attorney in Sacramento has been covering the case for the past few years:

In short, the defense brief argues that the evidence failed to support the continued inclusion of marijuana in Schedule I under either strict scrutiny or active rational basis review and the government’s state-based enforcement of federal drug laws in marijuana cases violates Equal Sovereignty.  Defense attorneys Zenia Gilg and Heather Burke do a good job of incorporating recent federal government actions into their constitutional arguments, most notably Section 538 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015, which President Obama signed into law on December 16, 2014.  This new law bars the use of U.S. Department of Justice funds to prevent a number of listed states “from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”  This law not only supports the defense’s Equal Sovereignty argument, but as the defense argues, “how is it Congress can justify a finding that marijuana has no medical benefit while demanding that the distribution of medical marijuana be protected from federal government interference.  This is not only irrational, it is absurd.”  Defense Brief, at 36.

The government counters that there is a rational basis for marijuana’s continued exclusion in Schedule I, so that the defense’s equal protection argument fails.  It also argues that (1) the defendants lack standing to challenge marijuana’s Schedule I listing; (2) the D.C. Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over classification challenges; and (3) the government’s conduct does not violate Equal Sovereignty principles.  The government predictably ignores the Section 538 amendment that prohibits funding of federal government attempts to interfere with state medical marijuana laws.

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