Times Union
Decision prohibits NYC sheriff from raiding licensed hemp stores and orders state regulators to no longer enter those premises armed or with police
State cannabis regulators overstepped their authority and the constitutional rights of licensed hemp stores when they used heavy-handed tactics to conduct warrantless raids of the shops, according to a court ruling issued Monday.
The ruling by state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Marcelle also found that the New York City Sheriff’s Office lacked the legal authority to conduct regulatory raids of licensed hemp stores without a court-authorized search warrant and must cease doing so.
The searing decision, which includes issuing a temporary restraining order against the state Office of Cannabis Management and the New York City Sheriff’s Office, also directed state regulators to limit their inspections of those stores to no more than two unarmed inspectors, unless they identify a “specific credible documented security concern associated with the particular business that they are inspecting.”
Joshua S. Bauchner, a New York City attorney for the petitioners in the case, said the ruling “vindicates the rights of hemp licensees across the state — often small, family-owned businesses — who are struggling against government overreach subjecting them to armed raids, seizure of lawful product, and labeling them as criminals, all without constitutional protections.”
Hundreds of licensed hemp stores across New York have been raided over the past two years by state regulators and police agencies that have seized millions of dollars in cannabinoid products — goods that the retailers had previously been selling under federal and state laws that over the past six years have expanded the legalization of hemp.
The seizures have been largely driven by new regulations governing hemp and cannabis that were quietly pushed through by the state Cannabis Control Board in late 2023, without public comment or the involvement of the state Legislature.
The regulations, which took effect early last year, sharpened the rules governing hemp products and effectively outlawed millions of dollars in products that many of the state’s thousands of licensed hemp retailers had been selling since New York legalized marijuana in 2021. As part of that law change, the state also set rules for hemp products and gave the Cannabis Control Board the power to regulate them.
But the enforcement of those regulations on hemp stores has included having regulators, tax agents and police officers, usually armed and wearing bullet-proof vests, enter the premises unannounced to search the personal belongings of employees, locked cabinets and safes, and areas of shops that were not part of the retail business. During the inspections the regulators and police also would turn off any surveillance cameras and in some instances made employees empty their pockets.
But Marcelle noted the authority given to cannabis regulators to inspect those licensed stores does not supersede the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment and that the sheriff’s office has no authority to conduct warrantless regulatory inspections of those shops.
Hemp store owners and their attorneys say the new regulations — and inspections that have often involved product seizures — have crippled their businesses. They contend that regulators and police are treating them like the operators of the thousands of illicit marijuana stores that have been blamed for taking away sales from licensed retail cannabis stores.
Officials with the Office of Cannabis Management have previously disputed that their unannounced inspections are “raids,” although store owners and employees have described searches that mirror those conducted by drug task forces.
“The (U.S.) Supreme Court has told governments that seek to conduct warrantless searches that they must place statutory limits on the administrative agents who seek out contraband without a warrant — this has not been done,” Marcelle wrote.
He also noted that the heavy law enforcement presence during the raids appeared to be intended to “intimidate and to compel employees and customers into compliance.”
“The manner of the searches’ execution is damning,” Marcelle wrote. “In all instances respondents were accompanied by heavily armed law enforcement officers who ordered customers out of the stores and prevented anyone from entering, permitting no commercial transactions to happen. … Although (state regulators) claim that the armed contingent was necessary for safety, no evidence of any specific instances was ever cited where hemp store employees or customers endangered or attempted to endanger the safety of regulators.”
In regards to the raids conducted by the New York City Sheriff’s Office, Marcelle said that while licensed hemp stores are subject to regulatory inspections by the Office of Cannabis Management, sheriff’s deputies are not trained on the statutory, scientific or administrative distinction between hemp and marijuana — and that the sheriff’s office lacks the “lawful authority to conduct a warrantless regulatory or administrative inspection of any business that possesses either a hemp or marijuana license.”
