The California Ultimate Courtroom dominated in choose of the state’s hashish rules on March 19, erasing an appellate courtroom’s resolution {that a} cultivator’s neighbor in Santa Barbara County may just block the usage of an easement as a result of hashish stays federally prison.
On this explicit case, Santa Barbara County granted Santa Rita Holdings Inc. a conditional-use allow to domesticate hashish on 2.54 acres owned through Kim Hughes. The county discovered that the encircling roadways had been ok for the cultivator to move its harvests for distribution into California’s approved marketplace beneath Santa Barbara’s land-use code necessities.
On the other hand, the one get right of entry to to and from the two.54 acres integrated the usage of a personal easement over a neighbor’s land that used to be topic to the conditional-use allow. That neighbor, JCCrandall LLC, objected to the cultivator’s use of a kind of half-mile, unpaved roadway working over the easement that used to be created through a deed in 1998.
JCCrandall claimed:
- the usage of the easement for hashish actions is illegitimate through the phrases of the easement deed and federal regulation;
- state regulation calls for JCCrandall’s consent for hashish actions on its land, and JCCrandall refuses to consent; and
- the street violates county requirements for personal roads.
Despite the fact that a tribulation courtroom denied JCCrandall’s petition, the California Courtroom of Attraction for the 2d District, Department 6, reversed that call in January 2025.
“We be apologetic about to tell that hashish is prohibited in California as a result of federal regulation says so,” Justice Arthur Gilbert wrote within the appellate resolution. “To not concern—our preserving does no longer fear the sale or non-public use of hashish. As an alternative, right here we imagine hashish because it applies to easements.”
In every other reversal, the California Ultimate Courtroom issued an order on March 19 directing the “de-publication” of the appellate courtroom’s resolution, that means it’s going to don’t have any impact as a precedent on long run instances in California.
State regulators from the Division of Hashish Regulate (DCC) took the Ultimate Courtroom’s resolution in JCCrandall v. County of Santa Barbara as a win for the state’s approved hashish program.
“We’re happy the Courtroom agreed to deal with that Courtroom of Attraction resolution on the Division of Hashish Controls’ request, supporting California regulation and its prison hashish business,” DCC Director Nicole Elliott mentioned in a press unlock.
The now-vacated appellate resolution had urged extra extensively that California’s hashish laws had been illegal as a result of hashish stays a Agenda I drug beneath the federal Managed Components Act, consistent with the DCC. However the March 19 Ultimate Courtroom resolution rescinds that opinion.
“Different California courts of enchantment have lengthy upheld California’s hashish laws, ruling that they don’t war with federal regulation,” consistent with the DCC. “As well as, the California Legislature has only if industrial hashish task carried out in compliance with California regulation and native requirements is lawful, and no longer a foundation for voiding rights secured through an easement.”
