Trump DOJ Declines To File Supreme Court Brief In Marijuana Companies’ Case Challenging Federal Prohibition

Supreme Court marijuana case, meet the sound of a government clearing its throat and saying nothing. The Justice Department just waived its right to weigh in on whether the justices should take up a bold challenge to federal marijuana prohibition—a quiet move with loud consequences. U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, a Trump appointee, told the high court he’d sit this one out unless the justices demand otherwise. In a world where cannabis taxation, federal enforcement, and state-by-state rules form a stew of contradictions, that silence isn’t neutrality. It’s a shrug in a room where the stakes include the future of the U.S. cannabis industry, the architecture of federalism, and whether the Controlled Substances Act still owns every inch of in-state market activity.

Here’s the setup. A coalition of Massachusetts-based cannabis businesses—Canna Provisions, Gyasi Sellers, Wiseacre Farm, Verano Holdings—has asked the Court to revisit Gonzales v. Raich, the 2005 precedent that greenlit federal prohibition even for marijuana grown and used entirely within a single state. Their petition argues that Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce doesn’t stretch to outlawing intrastate, state-regulated cannabis, especially after a decade of federal nonenforcement and the congressional rider shielding medical programs. Translation: the federal blanket has gotten too big for the bed. The filing says the CSA’s reach represents a drastic intrusion on state police powers at a time when 38 states prefer regulated markets to prohibition. And the government’s long wink-and-nod approach—medical carveouts here, prosecutorial memo there—has severed any plausible link between banning state-legal activity and managing interstate commerce. If you’re keeping score at home, it’s a classic constitutional knife fight: the Commerce Clause versus modern marijuana policy reform. Keep an eye on the public docket, because four votes for cert is all it takes to open the door: Supreme Court docket.

The road here wasn’t pretty. Lower courts swatted the plaintiffs away, leaning on Raich like a well-worn barstool. But there’s a pulse in this case, and it’s coming from the same place it always does: mixed signals from Washington colliding with the reality of a booming, state-regulated marketplace. Justice Clarence Thomas said the quiet part out loud back in 2021, calling the federal approach a “half-in, half-out” regime that “simultaneously tolerates and forbids” local cannabis use—an unstable posture that “strains basic principles of federalism.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration talks rescheduling to Schedule III yet keeps its powder dry; the Court is also taking up a separate question about whether unlawful drug users can possess firearms—a reminder that cannabis policy doesn’t live in a vacuum. And if you’re wondering how politics threads the needle, you don’t have to look far: see how party pressure and culture-war optics shaped a different drug headline in GOP Lawmakers ‘Forced’ Trump Into Signing Hemp Ban, Longtime Ally Roger Stone Says. Same town, same stage, same habit of treating policy like a prop.

Out in the real world—the one with rent, payroll, and seed-to-sale compliance—the cannabis industry impact of this Supreme Court gamble is enormous. Rescheduling might loosen tax shackles like 280E and nudge research forward, but it won’t solve the central riddle of federal prohibition: a legal market born in state law but shadowed by federal criminality. If the Court reopens Raich, you could see a legal cannabis revenue map recalibrated overnight, with intrastate commerce finally getting the constitutional respect state regulators have been sweating over for years. That story is rhyming loudly with hemp, where a new federal ban on intoxicating THC products has slammed the brakes on a different branch of the same plant. For the macro view of how prohibitionist whack-a-mole keeps backfiring, read The New Federal Hemp Ban Is An Opportunity To Legalize Cannabis Across The Board (Op-Ed). For the micro view—the kind with names on storefronts and worry lines on owners’ faces—look to the Southeast and North Carolina Hemp Businesses Brace For Impact Of New Federal THC Product Ban. Cannabis law is a kaleidoscope; turn it a quarter inch, and the picture changes from state pride to federal preemption to market panic.

So what does the DOJ’s non-brief mean? On the surface, not much—just a waiver. In practice, that silence lets the justices reach for the case without wading through a government defense of the status quo, and it hints at an administration comfortable letting the Court sort out the contradictions it hasn’t. Businesses praying for clarity—on banking, on interstate transport, on tax—and consumers who’ve spent years navigating a patchwork of rules might finally get an answer bigger than another memo. Culture is already ahead of policy; the Overton window isn’t just open, it’s letting in a gale. Even political biographies flirt with the psychedelic mainstream now, as in RFK Still Uses Psychedelics, Book From Journalist Who Allegedly Had An Affair With Him Implies. If the Court takes this up, we’ll finally see whether federalism means what it says on the label—or whether the Commerce Clause is a bottomless purse that swallows every state experiment whole. Until then, keep your receipts, mind your compliance, and if you’re looking to explore compliant THCA options while the gears of reform grind on, step into our shop.