Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has appealed to the state Supreme Court a Pulaski County Circuit Court order that stopped the rollout of medical marijuana.
In a statement, Rutledge’s office said Friday that the attorney general “disagrees with the circuit court and has appealed the ruling to the Arkansas Supreme Court.”
More: Read the appeal.
On Wednesday, Judge Wendell Griffen declared the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission’s scoring of cultivator applicants “null and void,” preventing the commission from officially awarding cultivation licenses.
The order came in a complaint by Naturalis Health LLC of Little Rock, which accused the commission of conflicts of interest and violations of other rules in choosing the winners of the five available licenses for growing marijuana under the state’s newly legal medical cannabis system. The complaint asked the court to prevent the commission from awarding the licenses.
Griffen’s ruling declared that the commission’s “licensing processes and decisions” violated Amendment 98 of the Arkansas Constitution, which voters approved in 2016 to allow legal medical marijuana sales. It also said the process violated “due process of law, resulted from improper procedure” and was arbitrary and capricious.
The ruling ground to a halt the process by the five-member commission to roll out the first medical marijuana program in the South. It came just weeks after the commission named the five companies that would receive the state’s five available applications to grow the plant.
Naturalis Health’s lawsuit was one of two filed against the commission after it scored the cultivator applications. Since Griffen’s order on Wednesday, five marijuana-cultivation applicants have asked to become parties to the lawsuit. One, Natural State Wellness Enterprises, was ranked No. 6 by the commission when it scored cultivator hopefuls and is asking to intervene on the side of the commission.