THE CANNABIST: The U.S. government has taken Colorado’s side in a dispute with neighboring states over marijuana legalization and is urging the Supreme Court to not hear a major challenge to the state’s recreational cannabis laws…
The Solicitor General’s brief comes seven months after the Supreme Court first asked the top government lawyer for an opinion on the lawsuit filed against Colorado’s legal cannabis laws by neighboring states Nebraska and Oklahoma. The new brief addresses Nebraska and Oklahoma’s complaint — and questions its place within the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction.
“The motion for leave to file a bill of complaint should be denied because this is not an appropriate case for the exercise of this Court’s original jurisdiction,” the brief says. “Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here — essentially that one State’s laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another State — would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of this Court’s original jurisdiction.” … (more)
