Hemp Companies Sue Ohio Over Law Reclassifying Hemp as Marijuana

A group of hemp beverage companies is asking an Ohio court to stop the state from treating federally legal hemp as marijuana — a reclassification that, under a law now in force, strips their products from gas stations and smoke shops and confines them to the licensed dispensaries that are the only outlets allowed to sell them.

Ten companies, including Cleveland-based Titan Logistics Group, Saucy Seltzer and Hopportunity Holding Company, filed the class-action challenge to Senate Bill 56, the marijuana and hemp overhaul that took effect on March 20, 2026. They are seeking a temporary and permanent injunction to halt enforcement, with a hearing set for Thursday, June 11, 2026.

How Ohio redrew the hemp line

Signed by Gov. Mike DeWine on December 19, 2025, the law redefined hemp to exclude any product containing more than 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container. Anything over that line is marijuana under Ohio law — and marijuana can be sold only at state-licensed dispensaries. The cutover was abrupt: THC drinks, delta-8 gummies and similar hemp-derived products that had been sold for years at convenience stores and vape shops became dispensary-only.

DeWine sharpened the effect by line-item vetoing a carve-out that would have let businesses keep selling hemp beverages with up to 5 milligrams of THC through the end of 2026, erasing what would have been a transition window. State officials have cast the broader crackdown as a consumer-protection measure, pointing to untested products sold without age limits. The law also rewrote parts of the adult-use program Ohio voters approved in 2023, and it outlasted a repeal effort after the group Ohioans for Cannabis Choice failed to gather enough signatures for a November referendum.

The dispute has split Ohio’s cannabis world. Licensed marijuana operators have largely backed the tighter rules, while hemp companies, independent retailers and some patient advocates have fought them, arguing the state criminalized a sector that built itself on the prior federal hemp standard.

The interstate commerce argument

The new complaint’s central claim is constitutional. Because Ohio confines these products to licensed dispensaries — and requires that cultivation, processing and retail all happen in-state — the plaintiffs say the law locks out-of-state hemp businesses out of the market entirely. “The moment federally legal hemp crosses Ohio’s borders, it becomes ‘marijuana’ for purposes of Ohio law,” the complaint states.

That, the companies argue, violates the constitutional rule against states discriminating against out-of-state commerce, and exposes operators to felony charges for transporting or processing goods the state now treats as marijuana. They also point out that Ohio caps dispensary licenses and is not currently issuing new ones, leaving outside sellers with no realistic way in. If every state drew the line as Ohio has, the plaintiffs warn, the national hemp market would splinter into 50 walled-off state markets rather than a single one.

The stakes are concrete for the plaintiffs. Titan Logistics, a Cleveland distributor, is the kind of middle-of-the-supply-chain operator most exposed: moving products that were lawful hemp when purchased but are now marijuana under Ohio law invites trafficking-level criminal liability, not just lost sales.

That theory has already won once. In Sandusky County, a judge this spring granted Seattle-based producer Cycling Frog a temporary injunction, finding the law “inherently discriminatory on its face” because it hands Ohio’s in-state marijuana industry — still illegal under federal law — a monopoly over hemp products that remain federally legal. It is the only challenge so far to produce a win, and only for that one company.

What operators should watch next

The case arrives as Ohio’s top legal office changes hands. Andy Wilson, appointed by DeWine and sworn in on June 8, 2026, after Dave Yost resigned, is expected to step in to defend the law on behalf of the 88 county prosecutors and nine city prosecutors named as defendants.

The litigation is also racing a federal clock. Congress moved in late 2025 to impose the same 0.4-milligram total-THC limit nationwide, with a one-year delay that pushes the federal hemp restrictions to November 2026 — and lawmakers in both chambers have since floated pushing that deadline to 2028. Ohio chose not to wait, enforcing its own version months ahead of Washington and turning a national product line into contraband at the state line.

For hemp operators, Thursday’s hearing is the test of whether the constitutional argument that worked for one company can deliver the statewide relief that has eluded everyone else. Similar whipsaws are playing out elsewhere — Texas retailers have watched a smokable-hemp ban switch on and off through the courts — but Ohio’s reclassification is among the sharpest tests yet of how far a state can go in walling off a market that federal law still treats as legal.