Alaskan pilot transporting his cannabis loses appeal to get his license back

An Alaskan pilot doesn’t look like he’ll get his license back after transporting cannabis within the state. As reported by Law360, the Federal Aviation Administration decided to revoke the pilot certificate for James M. Fejes Jr., who owned and operated Flying High Investments LLC, which was licensed by the Alaska Marijuana Control Board to operate a cultivation facility.

Some remote areas in the state are only accessible by air and many goods are transported that way. Fejes doesn’t deny he transported the cannabis, but claims in various appeals that the FAA  was wrong to take away the certificate. He believes that since cannabis is legal in Alaska, he should be able to transport his product legally.

The trouble began when according to the complaint, the FAA learned that Fejes was using his plane to distribute cannabis after the state’s Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office reported him for violating Alaska Marijuana Control Board “seed-to-sale” tracking requirements by reporting inaccurate information on his manifests. the complaint stated,

Cultivation facilities must prepare manifests using the state tracking system before transporting marijuana to another licensee. In 2017, ACMO began investigating Fejes for reporting inaccurate information on his manifests. It later issued Fejes a violation for reporting that he used his personal vehicle to transport the marijuana when he instead used a private aircraft.

He has appealed to an administrative law judge and the National Transportation Safety Board, where he was unsuccessful, leading him to the 9th Circuit.

One of his appeal arguments was that the transportation was within the state, not to another state and that the FAA doesn’t have jurisdiction there. However, the 9th Circuit, which heard the latest appeal disagreed. It said it agreed with the Third Circuit court that “Congress’s power over interstate commerce includes the power to regulate use of the nation’s navigable airspace, which is a channel of interstate commerce.”

The court opinion also stated that even if the plane was only used within the state, it is considered an interstate form of transportation. Even though it didn’t affect interstate commerce in this case, it could affect it in the future.

The pilot also claimed that because Alaska hadn’t convicted him of doing anything wrong, the FAA had no right to take his license. But the court disagreed and said even though he hadn’t been convicted yet, he still could. Plus, the law doesn’t require a conviction, just that the act was punishable.

Fejes also argued that the FAA misinterpreted the law and also overstepped its authority. However, the 9th Circuit disagreed and said the law was clear that the FAA had to act due to the language of the law with no exceptions.

Distributing marijuana via aircraft is a federal crime under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a), punishable by a term of imprisonment for more than one year. The FAA sounds like it wants prison time for Fejes.