BB&K In The News

BB&K's Jeffrey Dunn Presents Oral Arguments to Justices on City's Behalf

Yet some justices also noted that the state’s medical marijuana laws, while never explicitly overriding local ordinances, nevertheless call for consistent and uniform application throughout the state.

The Riverside case, coming more than 16 years after California voters decriminalized marijuana for medical purposes, could finally settle a thicket of conflicting court opinions about some local governments’ attempts to use zoning and land-use authority to prohibit the storefront sale of medical marijuana.

A ruling in the city’s favor would put the bans on solid legal footing. A decision that rejects wholesale prohibitions on dispensaries would force dozens of cities and counties across the state to go back to the drawing board.

Any ruling, meanwhile, could spur state lawmakers to pass clarifying legislation. A decision is due within 90 days.

Tuesday, justices repeatedly challenged J. David Nick, the attorney for the Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center, which contends that the voter-approved 1996 Compassionate Use Act and the 2004 Medical Marijuana Program passed by the Legislature requires local governments to regulate dispensaries, not ban them.

“The Legislature knows how to say, ‘Thou shalt not ban dispensaries,’ ” Justice Ming W. Chin told Nick.

Answered Nick, “If you were to allow bans, city by city, county by county, that is the opposite of what the Legislature was trying to accomplish.”

Attorney Jeffrey V. Dunn, of Irvine, who represented Riverside, said the medical marijuana laws only dealt with protecting people who use medical marijuana from criminal prosecution.

The law has zero bearing, he said, on local officials’ constitutional powers to provide for the public health, safety and welfare and approve zoning rules to those ends.

“If the Legislature had wanted to include a distribution system, it would have said that. There is no state-sanctioned distribution system” that would require local governments to allow dispensaries, he said.

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