Nebraska Supreme Court medical marijuana case pits notary drama against the will of the voters

Call it what it is: the Nebraska Supreme Court medical marijuana case is a street fight over who gets to define legitimacy—voters or paperwork. On one side, a longtime opponent of medical cannabis says last year’s petition drive was riddled with fraud, the fatal kind that poisons a well. On the other, a campaign with more signatures than it needed and a statewide mandate says: you can’t criminalize the people’s pen. The justices sounded skeptical of the theory that one bad notary can taint tens of thousands of signatures they touched, even after counties verified them and Nebraskans voted to approve the laws. The stakes are surgical: if the court reverses, sponsors could be forced into a second trial phase to “rehabilitate” enough signatures—86,499 on each of two petitions—though the campaign cleared the bar by 6,822 on the back end. The primary ingredient here isn’t weed; it’s election law, heat-lamped overnight and served cold.

The timing is a gut punch. We’re more than a year past the 2024 election, the votes counted, the public verdict clear. Justices asked the obvious: what changes now that the signatures were verified and the outcome is known? State lawyers insist a postgame review is still fair, that notaries—those “walking stamps of approval”—are professional truth tellers whose lies pierce presumptions and demand scrutiny. Campaign counsel counters that no state court has embraced this new theory of imputing one dishonest act across every page a notary touched. The result, they say, would be mass invalidation dressed up as due diligence. The mood outside the courthouse is simpler. As the campaign put it, “They cannot undo the will of the voters…every lawsuit, every delay, every political maneuver is confirmation that we are winning.” For more granular play-by-play of this evolving legal brawl, see the original reporting from Nebraska Examiner, whose coverage set the table for this hearing: Nebraska Examiner.

Under the hood, the fight runs on a century-old engine. In 1919, Nebraska’s Barkley v. Pool let courts extend a circulator’s fraud to everything else he handled, a relic from a time when women’s suffrage and forged signatures shared the same smoky room. Today, the state wants to port that logic to notaries. One circulator in the modern campaign pled guilty to forging names—phone book bad—and the sponsors agree those signatures should be tossed. A district judge already flagged a few thousand to be rehabilitated (711 on the legalization petition and 826 on the regulatory petition) and still found the challenge fell short. The state says the judge should’ve taken the imputation idea to its logical extreme: if the affidavit is rotten, treat everything it touches like it smells. The justices pressed the practicality. Would a second phase mean calling a parade of voters to confirm they signed what they read? Could anyone, anywhere, do that “quickly”? It’s a courtroom thought experiment that sounds a lot like trying to drink the Platte River with a straw.

Zoom out, and the Nebraska skirmish looks like a microcosm of America’s larger cannabis whiplash, where policy rides shotgun with politics and market stability gets left on the curb. If your goal is a rational national framework, you’ll hear the same refrain from operators and candidates alike: Marijuana Business Owner Running For Congress Says Federal Legalization Is The ‘Only Path’ For ‘National Market Stability’. Meanwhile, prosecutorial posture has swung like a saloon door. We’ve seen internal memos urging caution around cannabis cases—Newly Revealed Biden Marijuana Guidance Rescinded By Trump DOJ Told Prosecutors To Be ‘Extremely Cautious’ About Cannabis Cases—and layers of approval requirements before filing—Newly Revealed Biden Marijuana Guidance Rescinded By Trump DOJ Ordered Prosecutors To Seek Higher-Up Approval For Cases. Toss in a push to criminalize swaths of hemp, and you get policy by whiplash: Federal Hemp Ban Pushed By GOP Is A ‘Step Backward,’ Democratic Congresswoman Says (Op-Ed). The throughline is uncertainty—bad for business, worse for patients, and corrosive to public trust. Nebraska’s case is a state-sized version of the national problem: how many procedural tripwires do we lay before we admit we’re blowing up the path voters already paved?

The numbers, inconvenient as they are, don’t whisper—they bark. Legalization for up to five ounces with a doctor’s recommendation pulled 71 percent statewide, winning in every legislative district. The regulatory framework landed 67 percent and fell short in only three districts. That’s not a squeaker; that’s a mandate. The state points to one charged notary out of the many named—Jacy Todd of York, commission expired, trial pending—and says integrity demands a second phase. The sponsors reply that “integrity” cuts both ways, and there’s a difference between tightening the screws and stripping threads. If one notary’s misstep knocks out every door they ever opened, do we also question wills and real estate deals? The state says no; this is about petitions, full stop. The court will write the next chapter. But be honest: asking a campaign to prove tens of thousands of signatures “by a preponderance” after counties already ran the checks is less a safeguard than an obstacle course, the kind built to exhaust volunteers, donors, and faith in the process.

In a few months, Nebraska’s high court will decide whether to honor the voters’ blunt verdict or rehearse the same old dance about signatures versus sovereignty. However it lands, this case should be a cautionary tale for the cannabis industry, patients, and policymakers: build systems that survive hard questions without making public participation feel like a trap. The voters spoke. The bureaucracy blinked. Now the judiciary has to say whether democracy holds. Until then, keep your receipts, mind your affidavits, and if you’re exploring compliant cannabis options in the meantime, visit our shop.