Dormant Commerce Clause Meets Cannabis: Residency Requirements, Federal Illegality, and What Comes Next - Canna Law Blog™

Hashish legislation continues to dwell in constitutional limbo. States like Washington and California have constructed strong, tightly regulated hashish markets, whereas federal legislation nonetheless treats marijuana as contraband. That stress has now collided head‑on with one of many Structure’s strongest doctrines: the Dormant Commerce Clause.

Only recently, in January 2026, the Ninth Circuit weighed in with a intently watched resolution upholding Washington’s hashish residency necessities towards a dormant Commerce Clause problem. The case, Peridot Tree WA, Inc. v. Washington State Liquor & Hashish Management Board et al., does greater than resolve a licensing dispute. It tees up a elementary query: Does the Structure shield interstate commerce in a market Congress has made unlawful?

What’s the Dormant Commerce Clause?

The Structure provides Congress the facility to control interstate commerce. From that affirmative grant, the Supreme Court docket has lengthy inferred a unfavourable corollary: states typically might not enact legal guidelines that discriminate towards or unduly burden interstate commerce, even when Congress is silent. This implied restriction is called the Dormant Commerce Clause.

At its core, the doctrine is anti‑protectionist. States might not tilt the financial taking part in area to favor in‑state actors over out‑of‑state opponents. Legal guidelines that explicitly discriminate towards interstate commerce are continuously per se invalid.

However the Dormant Commerce Clause can be controversial. It’s choose‑made, not textually specific, and the Supreme Court docket has repeatedly warned that courts should train “excessive warning” earlier than utilizing it to invalidate democratically enacted state legal guidelines. That warning loomed giant within the Ninth Circuit’s evaluation.

Peridot Tree and the Ninth Circuit’s holding

The problem

Peridot Tree, a hashish firm owned by a Michigan resident, challenged hashish licensing regimes in each Washington and Sacramento, California. In every jurisdiction, Peridot alleged it met all substantive licensing standards besides residency necessities that favored native or in‑state candidates.

Peridot argued that these residency guidelines had been traditional financial protectionism and due to this fact unconstitutional below the dormant Commerce Clause.

The Ninth Circuit’s Reply: No Dormant Commerce Clause Safety. Due to this fact, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the decrease court docket’s dismissal of the lawsuits. Its holding was blunt: The dormant Commerce Clause doesn’t apply to hashish markets as a result of marijuana stays unlawful below federal legislation.

The court docket declined to increase a choose‑made constitutional doctrine to guard interstate commerce in a market that Congress has expressly prohibited. Within the court docket’s view, the “elementary goal” of the dormant Commerce Clause—preserving a nationwide market free from state protectionism—evaporates when Congress has determined that the nationwide market mustn’t exist in any respect.

In reaching that conclusion, the Ninth Circuit parted methods with a First Circuit resolution and a Second Circuit resolution, each of which held that state hashish residency necessities violate the dormant Commerce Clause, regardless of the federal illegality of marijuana. The Ninth Circuit as an alternative aligned itself with a rising physique of district court docket selections (and with dissents from different circuits) emphasizing that unlawful markets are constitutionally completely different in type.

Put in a different way: there isn’t any implied constitutional proper to have interaction in unlawful interstate commerce in line with the Ninth Circuit.

Federal developments: rescheduling and combined indicators

The federal authorities’s posture on hashish has grown more and more contradictory, and we not too long ago noticed that it’s extra complicated than ever.

Congress continues to categorise marijuana as unlawful below the CSA
On the identical time, Congress has repeatedly barred the Division of Justice from interfering with state medical marijuana applications.
Federal enforcement has largely deprioritized hashish.

President Trump’s Government Order

In December 2025, President Trump issued an govt order directing the Lawyer Normal to finish the rule-making course of to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. Whereas rescheduling wouldn’t legalize hashish outright, now we have defined that it might signify a dramatic shift in federal coverage—acknowledging accepted medical use and decreasing prison severity.

The Ninth Circuit expressly addressed this improvement and located it irrelevant for now. Courts, the panel emphasised, should apply the legislation because it exists, not as it would exist after future political motion.

What occurs if Hashish is rescheduled? A prediction

If marijuana is rescheduled to Schedule III, the constitutional panorama might change—however not robotically.

Brief time period

Hashish would stay federally regulated.
Interstate hashish commerce would nonetheless be illegal absent congressional authorization.
States would probably proceed to defend residency necessities as legitimate workout routines of police energy.

Medium time period

As soon as hashish is not handled as a substance with “no accepted medical use,” the Ninth Circuit’s core rationale begins to weaken. Courts could also be much less prepared to say that Congress has declared the whole nationwide market illegitimate.

The more than likely end result is just not a right away invalidation of residency necessities even with rescheduling on the horizon. Extra concisely, there’s unlikely to be main motion within the utility of the dormant Commerce Clause to invalidate residence necessities absent an act of congress rectifying any hashish all illegality within the markets.

From one other perspective, if Congress continues to delay full legalization whereas tolerating state markets, it turns into harder to argue that hashish is really “exterior” interstate commerce. Sooner or later, constitutional doctrine could also be pressured to meet up with financial actuality. Till then, residency necessities within the Ninth Circuit stay on stable footing.