Three Judges on Los Angeles Appeals Court Unanimously Agree: Dispensaries Are Legal Under California State Law
By Anne Holland
On Monday the Los Angeles County 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously overturned a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries, indicating dispensaries are legal under state law, and individual municipalities cannot ban them.
The reverberations are already being felt. Tuesday night San Leandros City Attorney Jayne Williams asked the City Council to delay their formal vote on banning dispensaries until she could review the new legal decision. The vote had been scheduled for over a year. Williams has promised to get back to the City Council with a formal opinion by July 16th.
The result will be more ban-vote delays in cities throughout LA county, as attorneys expect the matter to work its way up via appeals to the California Supreme Court.
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I have been trying to find out what the constitutional tenth amendment is all about. I thought that under the tenth amendment, that the federal government was not suppose to interfere with state laws, or business, unless it crossed over the state boundary’s. If it did, then it became interstate business, then and only then, Would it fall into the federal law scope. What I would like to know. Has any state challenged the federal government in the Supreme court over the tenth amendment?
The commerce clause as interpreted by the supreme court is where the federal government gets all its powers. Commerce does have to cross state lines it just has to have an effect on more than one state. There is a lot on the Wikipedia about the commerce clause. There currently is a ruling in Washington by a US District Judge, a federal judge of the highest level that threw out all evidence because the police did not first check if the person had a medical marijuana card. In order for his ruling to be overridden the Supreme Court would have to take the case on appeal. So, as it stand right now, the DEA could see pot growing on your property but could not do anything about it unless they determined that no one on the property had a medical marijuana card. So, right now according to Frem Nielson, the judge in Washington, states rights trump federal rights on medical marijuana.