In a case that could help clarify the boundaries of a federal law that protects state-legal medical marijuana activity from prosecution by the federal government, a Maine man is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a dispute in which the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigated and subsequently charged him under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA).
In a petition to the high court filed last week, Lucas Sirois asserts that the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment, which has been enacted into federal law via spending bills since late 2014, should prevent DOJ from pursuing its case against him. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit previously ruled against Sirois, but his lawyers assert that was in error.
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 his prosecution is in violation of the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment, an appropriations rider that 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."
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