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SALT LAKE CITY — A lawsuit that sought to prevent the medical marijuana initiative from reaching the ballot in November was dropped on Monday.
But one of the plaintiffs says the move is part of a larger strategy to move their legal fight from federal court to state court.
"We're evaluating going back to state court and filing the claim simply under the state Constitution," said Walter Plumb, president of Drug Safe Utah, a political issues committee formed earlier this year in opposition to the medical marijuana initiative.
"It's about as simple as that."
Plumb is one of a handful of individuals listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, in addition to Drug Safe Utah. The case was filed in May in state court, then moved after about a week to U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City at the request of the defense. The defendant in the case is Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, to whom state elections officials report.
The lawsuit that was dropped Monday sought an injunction preventing Cox from putting the initiative on the November ballot for Utah voters' consideration. It argued that portions of the ballot initiative violate the U.S. and Utah constitutions, and that approving it for consideration by voters was also an infringement of Utah law.
"(The initiative) would legalize the drug known as marijuana or cannabis, which is a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law," the lawsuit said. "On its face, the initiative clashes with governing federal law and, therefore, places the state in violation of the U.S. Constitution's Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law the 'supreme law of the land.'"
The lawsuit also claimed Cox was not within his rights to approve the medical marijuana initiative's signature gathering process in the first place because ballot measures that are "patently unconstitutional" or "could not become law if passed" are prohibited in Utah code.
"It's not over. The (initiative) is still unconstitutional as it's written in about four or five different areas," Plumb said Monday, adding that dropping the case "is just lawyer maneuvering."
"In evaluating this, we think it's better to be back in state court, so we're going to drop federal claims and go back to state claims. So it's just not that big of a deal, really," he said.
The reason Plumb and the other plaintiffs feel better about their chances in state court, he said, is that federal court has rules in place "that are very difficult as to who can bring (a) claim" in a lawsuit.
Plumb declined to estimate a timeline for when the case may be filed in state court, except to say it "could be soon."
Notwithstanding Plumb's assurances about his long term legal strategy, the ballot initiative campaign, Utah Patients Coalition, heralded the dropping of the federal case Monday as a victory.
"Patients and advocates of cannabis reform in Utah are one step closer today to giving patients access to their medicine, without being criminalized, than we were yesterday," DJ Schanz, director of the Utah Patients Coalition, said in a prepared statement. "We look forward to November when the voters of Utah can finally have a say."
Legal action, or the threat of it, has recently been at the center of multiple disagreements between the most ardent supporters and opponents of the initiative.
On May 8, Drug Safe Utah filed a formal complaint with the state elections office alleging that a representative from the Utah Patients Coalition offered money to get possession of signed initiative petition signature removal forms that had not yet been submitted for counting.
Days later, the Utah Patients Coalition published a letter it sent to Drug Safe Utah that threatened a lawsuit in response to "your effort to fraudulently obtain the withdrawal of signatures from the … petition."
The groups disagree sharply over several issues related to medical marijuana legalization, including the strength of the research into the drug's benefits for patients and how to prescribe and use it, whether or not the initiative is narrow enough to prevent opening the door for recreational use, and decriminalization's effects on public safety.
