Massachusetts marijuana businesses have filed a lawsuit aiming to block an initiative to roll back the state’s voter-approved legalization law from reaching the November ballot.
The proposal to repeal laws allowing legal recreational cannabis sales violates the state Constitution by containing “impermissibly unrelated subjects,” and the state attorney general’s official summary is “misleading and deficient,” according to the complaint filed on Tuesday before the state’s Supreme Judicial Court.
The measure also proposes “an unconstitutional regulatory taking” by “destroy[ing] the reasonable, investment-backed expectations of affected businesses and individuals and would eliminate the livelihoods of thousands of Massachusetts residents,” the suit, brought by participants in the state’s Cannabis Social Equity Program, says.
The plaintiffs—Stem Haverhill owner Caroline Pineau, Treevit LLC CEO Gyasi Sellers and Paper 4 Crane Provisions majority owners Lisa Mauriello and Boey Bertold—want the court to declare the initiative invalid, hold that Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D) erred in her summary and certification of the measure and enjoin Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin (D) from putting it on the ballot.
The initiative violates the law by combining “several unrelated and independent subjects, including criminal justice changes, elimination of the Social Equity Program, removal of local control over marijuana establishments
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