Michigan Court Says Federal Ban Alone Can’t Bar Probation Cannabis

People on probation in Michigan can keep using cannabis that is legal under state law, after the state’s highest court ruled that a judge cannot bar it as a probation condition for the sole reason that marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The Michigan Supreme Court handed down the unanimous decision in People v. Hess on July 6, 2026, reversing lower courts that had treated federal prohibition as a reason — and, in one appeals panel’s reading, a requirement — to keep probationers away from cannabis. Writing for the full seven-member bench, Justice Elizabeth Welch held that trial courts may not prohibit state-legal marijuana use as a condition of probation simply because federal law still criminalizes it.

The stakes reach beyond a single defendant. Recreational cannabis has been legal for adults 21 and older in Michigan since voters approved it in 2018, and the ruling means people placed under state supervision cannot be automatically ordered to abstain on federal-prohibition grounds alone. It also settles a question that keeps resurfacing wherever state legalization runs up against the federal ban: whether a state court can borrow federal law to punish conduct its own voters made legal.

How the court got there

The justices built on a 2014 precedent, Ter Beek v. City of Wyoming, in which the court held that the federal Controlled Substances Act does not preempt Michigan’s medical-marijuana law. That case involved a registered patient near Grand Rapids whose city had tried to use federal prohibition to stop him from growing cannabis at home. The court reasoned that the state law grants only an immunity that operates under state law and does nothing to prevent federal agents from enforcing federal law, so the two can stand together.

Welch applied the same reasoning to the 2018 recreational statute, the Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marihuana Act. Because the law shields compliant use from state arrest, prosecution, or penalty of any kind, and because it overrides conflicting state statutes, it prevails over Michigan’s probation law where the two collide. Where the recreational law and the probation act conflict, “the MRTMA controls,” Welch wrote. A blanket ban keyed to federal law, she added, cannot be reconciled with what Michigan voters intended when they legalized the drug.

The federal landscape shifted while the case moved through the system, but not enough to matter. In April 2026, the Justice Department reclassified some cannabis as a Schedule III drug, a change limited to FDA-approved cannabis medicines and products sold under state medical-marijuana licenses. Adult-use cannabis was left out and remains a federal crime, the same divide that has led states such as Wyoming to keep marijuana in Schedule I even after the federal move. The court acknowledged the reclassification and set it aside as irrelevant to recreational use.

What the ruling leaves open

The decision is narrower than it may first look. The justices pointedly declined to decide whether a judge can still bar cannabis as a discretionary, individually tailored condition, one aimed at a particular person’s rehabilitation or assessed risks rather than imposed across the board. Michigan law already requires that discretionary probation terms be matched to the individual and designed to reduce reoffending. The court said that issue was not in front of it and left it for later. In a related case it had planned to hear alongside this one, involving a driver impaired by marijuana, the same protection would not apply, because that use fell outside what state law allows.

That leaves prosecutors and trial judges to work out where the line sits. Montcalm County Prosecutor Thomas Ginster, who argued the state’s case, told the Detroit Free Press that courts can still restrict cannabis when an individual screening turns up a substance-use risk, but he called screening every probationer that way “unworkable,” especially for smaller communities with limited resources.

The dispute started with a minor offense. Danielle Heaven-Leah Hess pleaded guilty to retail fraud in August 2021 after stealing clothing and was placed on a year of probation that barred her from marijuana, with no reason recorded. She tested positive twice in 2022, lost her youthful-offender status, and served 10 days in jail before her appeal advanced. The Supreme Court sent her case back with instructions to reconsider her probation terms, vacate the first violation, and dismiss the second.

Why it matters beyond Michigan

For the broader industry, the ruling is another marker in how state courts are handling the gap between legalization at home and prohibition in Washington. Judges have grown less willing to let the federal ban quietly erase protections that state voters wrote into law, a pattern visible from firearm-rights disputes to the clearing of old marijuana convictions. Michigan’s decision does not reach federal probation or federal sentences, which stay under federal rules. Inside the state, it shifts the burden back onto judges to justify a cannabis restriction on the facts of the person before them, rather than on an act of Congress.