A top conservative advocacy organization is backing a coalition of marijuana businesses that are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a case challenging the constitutionality of federal cannabis prohibition.
In an amicus brief filed with the court on Wednesday, the Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF) implored justices to hear the case and settle the question of whether imposing federal marijuana criminalization within states that have enacted their own legalization laws violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The libertarian-leaning AFPF said in the brief that it’s their organization’s belief that “the general power of governing rests with the States—not the federal government—and that most decisions should be made at the state and local levels, reflecting the needs and priorities of their communities.”
To that end, it said, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) that treats cannabis as a strictly prohibited Schedule I drug—at least as it concerns the Massachusetts-based marijuana businesses petitioning the court—”exceeds constitutional limits on federal authority as an original matter and cannot be squared with basic principles of federalism.”
“More broadly, AFPF believes that Gonzales v. Raich—a constitutional aberration granting the federal government authority to trample on States’ core power to choose whether and
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