John SchroyerAn Alabama appeals court cleared the way for the state’s medical marijuana commissioners to resume the business licensing process, which has been on hold since January 2024 due to a lawsuit that claimed regulators failed to follow their own rules in choosing permit winners.
The lawsuit was originally filed by license applicant Alabama Always, which had applied for one of five coveted integrated permits, but it was not among the winners. A circuit court judge granted a temporary restraining order in the case, which the state Court of Civil Appeals threw out this week in a ruling that found the lower court exceeded its authority, WBRC reported.
The appeals court sided with the state Medical Cannabis Commission, which had argued that the lawsuit was premature because Alabama Always hadn’t finished the administrative appeals process.
But the appeals court also on Friday ordered the AMCC to finish a full review of Alabama Always’ business application and to process a full appeal of the license denial, WBRC reported.
The ruling leaves open the potential for yet another temporary restraining order from another jilted license applicant, WBRC noted, because it didn’t address the underlying argument in the lawsuit.
Regardless, AMCC staff celebrated the ruling, saying in a statement that they are hopeful that the licensing process can now resume and that the medical marijuana market may be able to launch this coming year.
“We are pleased with today’s decision,” AMCC Director John McMillan said in a statement. “We are hopeful that this decision will remove the obstacles that have prevented the Commission from completing the licensing process and doing the work the law charged it to do.”
AMCC Chairman Rex Vaughn also told ABC 33/40 News, “Today we have hope for those patients – hope that we can proceed with our hearing process and get those products into their hands.”
Will Somerville, an attorney for Alabama Always, said his client was also pleased with the outcome because it will force regulators to take a closer look at its cannabis license application.
“This Appellate Court Order gave Alabama Always everything we have been asking for since December of 2023: the Court ordered the Alabama Cannabis Commission to abide by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) in regard to medical cannabis licenses which they had previously refused to do,” Somerville said in a statement.
“This means that companies who were ‘awarded’ licenses by the Commission will be required to appear at a hearing conducted by an Administrative Law Judge and prove that they satisfy the requirements that the Alabama Legislature set for getting a medical cannabis license,” Somerville said. “We can appear at that hearing and offer facts and offer proof that they are not qualified under the state cannabis law. The Court’s ruling also guarantees that after we have been denied a medical cannabis license, we are entitled to the same hearing in order to prove that we are entitled to a license.”
The Alabama Always lawsuit is far from the only legal action filed against the commission by disgruntled license hopefuls, however, and at least one state lawmaker is advocating for scrapping the entire commission and beginning again from scratch, despite the four years already invested in trying to launch a medical marijuana market.
Before the lawsuit froze the licensing process, the AMCC had chosen five integrated license winners in December 2023, after first awarding licenses in June, and then redoing some of those choices in August that year amid objections from several losing applicants.
