Ann Marie Borges, et al. v. County of Mendocino, California

On March 6, 2023, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit filed it’s unpublished memorandum affirming the district court order dismissing Plaintiffs’-Appellants’ due process claim that the County of Mendocino arbitrarily and capriciously denied their application for a cannabis cultivation permit. The Ninth Circuit held: as no federally protected property interest exists in cultivating marijuana, the district court properly dismissed Plaintiffs’ substantive due process claims. While Plaintiffs attempt to “prove the marijuana in question is part of intrastate commerce,” we cannot revisit Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005), which upheld the CSA as a valid exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause authority as it is in the Supreme Court’s “prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents.” State Oil Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3, 20 (1997). The timely Petition for Rehearing En Banc was denied on April 19, 2023. State law creates property rights for purposes of 42 U.S.C. §1983 (Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564 (1972)) and the State of California created property rights in cannabis, see Cal. Bus & Prof. Code §§26000- 26250. Thus, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling instanter violates the property rights of the Petitioners and millions of other citizens in the 38 sovereign states which have created cannabis related property rights. The question presented is whether this court should exercise its sole prerogative to revisit Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005) to reverse the irrebuttable