Four New Yorkers who served in the U.S. Armed Forces have sued, inter alia, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration, accusing state officials of favoring convicted drug felons over disabled vets in the awarding of licenses to sell legal marijuana. The plaintiffs are having some early success.
On August 7, 2023, Judge Kevin Bryant in New York Supreme Court, County of Albany, ordered that the New York Cannabis Control Board (“CCB”) and Office of Cannabis Management (“OCM”) are restrained from awarding or further processing any more Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (“CAURD”) licenses. OCM is also restrained from conferring operational approval upon any more provisional or existing CAURD licenses pending further order of the Court. The parties are due back in Court today, August 9th, to argue the merits of the motion upon which the temporary restraining order was issued.
The CAURD lawsuit
The lawsuit alleges that the CCB and OCM failed to set up a legal cannabis market envisioned by New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (“MRTA”) approved in 2021, which specifically lists disabled vets as one of five priority “social and economic equity” groups to get at least 50% of employment opportunities in the budding pot industry.
The five groups delineated in
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