The Supreme Court has held, 6-3, that federal drug laws that outlaw the possession of marijuana trump state laws allowing the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. (The case is called Gonzales v. Raich.) The issue before the Court was whether federal authority to regulate "interstate commerce" extends to marijuana that is grown by the people who plan to consume it, and that will never be sold. The Court held that federal regulation of such marijuana was "necessary and proper" to Congress’s authority to regulate (or, in this case, eliminate) the interstate market for marijuana.
The six votes in favor of federal regulation were Justices Stevens (who wrote the majority opinion), Kennedy, Scalia, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. Scalia did not join Stevens’ opinion, but wrote a separate opinion concurring in the Court’s judgment. Justice O’Connor wrote the principal dissent, joined in full by Chief Justice Rehnquist and in part by Justice Thomas; Thomas also wrote a separate dissent.
There will be a huge quantity of commentary on this case in the blawgosphere; SCOTUSblog is doing a good job of keeping up with it. I will add only that my prediction as to how this case would come out was correct in the result, and correct with respect to the votes of 7 of the 9 Justices (I guessed incorrectly that O’Connor and Rehnquist would vote with the majority).
UPDATE: Apparently, one of the lead plaintiffs in this case plans to continue smoking marijuana regardless of the Court’s ruling. It will be most interesting to see whether the federal government decides to prosecute her.
I suppose on some level the federal laws have to trump the state laws. I don’t think the federal laws leave much wiggle room for states regarding the illegality of drugs.Still, I bet it’s pretty funny to listen to upstanding (well, er, maybe) old SCOTUS judges say the word “marijuana” over and over again. grin
Just to clarify: the plaintiffs’ argument was that because the marijuana at issue here was being grown and consumed entirely in-state, and was never sold at all, it did not fall within Congress’s “interstate commerce” power. That’s a good enough argument to have gotten 3 votes (as well as a lot of law profs, especially those over at the Volokh Conspiracy). There’s no doubt that a valid federal law trumps a contrary state law; the question here was whether the federal law was valid.
Ah, thanks. Yeah, this was one I didn’t have as much time to follow.Still, it’s not surprising that the ruling came down against, is it? We have a long way to go to change the way we think about marijuana or other substances. (Like the fact we treat addicts like criminals instead of people with a disease.)
No, I didn’t find the result surprising (like I said, I had predicted an 8-1 vote instead of the actual 6-3). Although I think all of the Justices were sympathetic to the plight of the plaintiffs, for whom medical marijuana really does seem to work, I’m not shocked that they couldn’t see their way clear to wiping out federal authority over drug possession.