The Justice Department\u2019s request to dismiss a lawsuit over the federal ban on medical marijuana patients\u2019 firearms rights is rife with contradictions and represents an \u201cinsulting, illogical, and ahistorical\u201d legal perspective, a new motion from attorneys representing Florida\u2019s agriculture commissioner and medical cannabis patients says.<\/p>\n
DOJ filed its motion to dismiss the case last month<\/a>, and advocates were taken aback by the content of the legal arguments, which at points drew indirect and stigmatizing parallels between state-licensed medical marijuana patients and violent felons, people with mental illnesses and panhandlers.<\/p>\n The department presented those controversial analogues in response to an amended complaint that the plaintiffs filed that cited a recent U.S. Supreme Court case concerning gun restrictions in New York. In that case, the court effectively said that gun laws must be generally consistent with the intent of the framers of the Constitution and the historical context of the original 1791 ratification of the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n DOJ\u2019s motion read as \u201cinsulting\u201d Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried told Marijuana Moment last month<\/a>. \u201cI think that they missed the ball here\u2014and it\u2019s very disconcerting that this is the direction that they took.\u201d<\/p>\n In the weeks since the Justice Department filed its request to dismiss the case, attorneys for the plaintiffs put together the new 37-page response that sharply criticizes the manner in which the federal government depicted state-legal cannabis patients and asserts that DOJ ignored or otherwise \u201cfailed\u201d to justify a dismissal in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cVera Cooper and Nicole Hansell are not \u2018tramps,\u2019 \u2018mentally ill,\u2019 \u2018criminals,\u2019 \u2018lunatics,\u2019 \u2018panhandlers,\u2019 or \u2018unvirtuous.\u2019 The Defendants\u2019 assertions and analogies to the contrary are insulting, illogical, and ahistorical,\u201d the response brief filed on Wednesday says, referring to two plaintiffs who were denied firearms due to their status as Florida medical cannabis patients.<\/p>\n \u201cThose are not even the most dubious comparisons or assertions the Defendants advance, as they also appear to equate depriving state-compliant medical marijuana patients of their Second Amendment rights to the historical disarming of Catholics and Native Americans,\u201d it continues. \u201cThe Plaintiffs do not believe that such clearly unconstitutional restrictions have any application to this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s DOJ relied on arguments \u201cas \u2018contradictory and unstable\u2019 as their overall marijuana policy,\u201d the new filing says, citing 2021 remarks about the state-federal cannabis conflict from conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey deem state-compliant medical marijuana patients too violent to be trusted with a core Constitutional right, but simply gloss over the fact that federal law protects those patients\u2019 actions. In fact, in sworn testimony to Congress, Attorney General Merrick Garland has stated that marijuana use is nonviolent and does not cause societal harm. The Defendants analogize medical marijuana patients to felons even though they have actual knowledge that federal law makes marijuana use a misdemeanor absent a prior offense.<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n In all, the Defendants rely on inapplicable case law and dubious logical leaps in seeking to dismiss the Amended Complaint. All such attempts fail. Further, in seeking summary judgment in this matter, the Defendants make clear their contradictory policies in this matter and that, at a minimum, disputes of fact exist as to whether the laws and regulations at issue should survive this as-applied challenge. Therefore, the Defendants\u2019 motions should be denied, and they should be required to answer the Amended Complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n The response brief contests the Justice Department\u2019s position on which of the plaintiffs have standing, charges the defendants with misconstruing federal spending bill rider that prohibits the use of DOJ funds to enforce prohibition against patients acting in compliance with state medical marijuana programs and rejects the notion that cannabis patients are inherently not law-abiding and dangerous.<\/p>\n With respect to the questionable historical analogues that DOJ referenced in light of the Supreme Court case, the attorneys said the department\u2019s parallels \u201cstray too far from the laws at issue\u201d and \u201cseek to rely upon the historical concept that, generally, the government has sought to disarm those it viewed as dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Defendants offer nothing to show that any laws during the pertinent time period sought to prevent the general use of medical marijuana or any other substance as a means of curbing violence. In fact, they do not attempt to show that such use was considered at all related to dangerous behavior. As the Amended Complaint makes clear, medicinal use of marijuana was widely accepted prior to at least the Marihuana Tax of 1937. The Defendants do not dispute this.\u201d<\/p>\n The new filing also cites several quotes from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who said during his confirmation proceedings that DOJ shouldn\u2019t waste resources<\/a> going after people acting in compliance with state marijuana laws and that marijuana is a \u201cnon-violent crime with respect to usage that does not require us to incarcerate people.\u201d<\/p>\n Taken altogether, the attorneys for the plaintiffs said that it would be reasonable for the court to schedule a one-hour hearing for oral arguments to sort out these issues. It requests that the department\u2019s motion for dismissal and summary judgment be denied, or at least partly denied if the court rejects one part of their argument that they concede was inappropriately included in the prior brief.<\/p>\n For the time being, the current federal policy persists, making it so people are denied gun purchases if they\u2019re honest about their cannabis use while filling out a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) background check form\u2014regardless of state law.<\/p>\n As Fried previously told Marijuana Moment, the lawsuit at hand is not about expanding gun rights, per se. It\u2019s a matter of constitutionality that she and other key allies in the gun reform movement\u00a0feel would bolster public safety<\/a>\u00a0if the case ultimately goes in their favor.<\/p>\n Supporters of the lawsuit argue that the ATF requirement effectively creates an incentive for cannabis consumers to either lie on the form, buy a gun on the illicit market or simply forgo a constitutional right.<\/p>\n In 2020, ATF\u00a0issued an advisory specifically targeting Michigan<\/a>\u00a0that requires gun sellers to conduct federal background checks on all unlicensed gun buyers because it said the state\u2019s cannabis laws had enabled \u201chabitual marijuana users\u201d and other disqualified individuals to obtain firearms illegally.<\/p>\n There have been previous efforts in Congress to specifically protect medical cannabis patients against losing their right to purchase and possess guns,\u00a0but those efforts have not been enacted<\/a>.<\/p>\n Read the response brief<\/a> to DOJ\u2019s motion to dismiss the medical cannabis and gun rights lawsuit below:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n UK Government Blocks Bermuda From Legalizing Marijuana On Same Day New Prime Minister Takes Office<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n The post Biden DOJ Must Explain \u2018Insulting, Illogical\u2019 Motion In Medical Marijuana Patients\u2019 Gun Rights Lawsuit, Filing From Florida Official Says<\/a> appeared first on Marijuana Moment<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The Justice Department\u2019s request to dismiss a lawsuit over the federal ban on medical marijuana patients\u2019 firearms rights is rife with contradictions and represents an \u201cinsulting, illogical, and ahistorical\u201d legal perspective, a new motion from attorneys representing Florida\u2019s agriculture commissioner and medical cannabis patients says. DOJ filed its motion toContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,81],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57020"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57020"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57021,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57020\/revisions\/57021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Biden DOJ Must Explain \u2018Insulting, Illogical\u2019 Motion In Medical Marijuana Patients\u2019 Gun Rights Lawsuit, Filing From Florida Official Says<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"