When Illinois legalized medical marijuana in 2015, it also banned licensed medical marijuana businesses from making political contributions.
The Liberty Justice Center and the Pillar of Law Institute filed a lawsuit challenging the ban on behalf of two Libertarian Party candidates for office who wanted to solicit donations from those businesses, Claire Ball and Scott Schluter.
In March 2017, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled that the ban violated the First Amendment. Judge John Z. Lee concluded that the State failed to justify banning contributions from medical cannabis industry while not banning contributions from any other regulated industry.
“The First Amendment prohibits the government from using campaign finance rules to give some groups a political advantage over others,” said Liberty Justice Center senior attorney Jacob Huebert after the decision was issued. “The Court’s decision rightly applied that rule to strike down Illinois’ unfair, unconstitutional discrimination against certain legal businesses and the candidates they support.”
Jacob Huebert serves as the president of the Liberty Justice Center. He previously served as the Liberty Justice Center’s Director of Litigation. In that role, he successfully litigated cases to protect economic liberty, free speech and other constitutional rights. Jacob and his work have appeared in numerous national media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Fox News Channel.
Jeffrey M. Schwab is a Senior Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, where he litigates cases to protect the rights to free speech, economic liberty, private property and other Constitutional rights in both federal and state courts across the country.
No results found right now, please visit our newsroom.
(Associated Press)—Illinois’ medical marijuana companies, operating in an industry abounding with rules, now have one less regulation they have to follow. The Chicago Tribune reports that a federal judge ruled last week that a provision preventing cannabis companies from making campaign contributions in Illinois wasn’t constitutional. The ruling was in...
(Reason)—The state of Illinois enacted in 2013 a pretty blatantly unconstitutional law forbidding businesses engaged in (legal) medical marijuana sales or growing from contributing to political campaigns, in effect either directly or via a PAC (though only the latter was literally codified). But since candidates were also barred from accepting...