Ten Wyoming hemp businesses and one individual hemp seller on Monday asked a federal judge to declare Wyoming’s new law against synthetic cannabis variants unlawful by Congress’ standards, and to block it going forward.
The plaintiffs filed their action in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming against Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, the state attorney general, the state director of agriculture, and all of Wyoming’s elected prosecutors.
“(The new law) creates insurmountable confusion around criminal liability and destroys the mere act of processing hemp into consumable products,” says the lawsuit. “(We) face irreparable harm unless this court enjoins (the law).”
The lawsuit claims that Wyoming’s recently-passed Senate File 32, which is now Enrolled Act 24 and became enforceable Monday, is in violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
The law expands the definition of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) to include some of its psychoactive and synthetic variants, making it harder to sell low-THC hemp products under a permissive federal law.
Farm Bills
The federal, 2014 Farm Bill sparked an agricultural pilot program allowing licensed growers to cultivate industrial hemp. Wyoming echoed the act in 2019 by removing industrial hemp from its definition of the unlawful drug marijuana, the filing says.
In 2018, former President Donald Trump signed the 2018 Farm Bill, expanding the definition of lawful hemp to include all variants of materials containing less than 0.3% of the intoxicant delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The 2018 Farm Bill prohibits states from blocking the interstate commerce of hemp or hemp products.
It’s “meaningless” to have a legal protection for shipping some hemp varieties across state lines but a prohibition on selling them in Wyoming, the sellers’ lawsuit argues.
The Claims
The sellers’ first claim is that their market “built up since 2017 and operated smoothly for years is now threatened with extinction” under the new law, because the law “recriminializ(es) popular hemp-derived cannabinoids.”
The complaint says the law unconstitutionally lets Wyoming interfere with the federal government.
Secondly, the complaint asks the judge to block the law from going into effect. The sellers say they have a good case and will suffer irreparable harm if the law isn’t blocked.
Thirdly, the sellers are asking the court to declare their points correct, and the state’s law wrong.
Fourth, the sellers claim the law violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which gives the federal government control over interstate commerce. And fifth, they allege the law is too vague to be fair.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
