House Panel Advances Rider to Block Cannabis Rescheduling

The House Appropriations Committee voted on May 13, 2026, to advance a federal spending bill containing a provision that would bar the Justice Department and DEA from using the bill’s funds to reschedule marijuana. The 32-28 vote puts a significant faction of House Republicans on a collision course with the Trump administration, which has already taken executive action to begin that rescheduling.

State-licensed medical cannabis operators and patients gained federal protection less than three weeks before the committee acted. The Justice Department’s rescheduling move has immediate, concrete consequences for them — but the committee’s rider, if it becomes law, would threaten the broader process still underway.

What the Rider Does

The anti-rescheduling provision in the House Appropriations Committee’s FY2027 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies bill bars any funds provided by that measure from being used to move marijuana off its current federal schedule or reschedule it to a lower one. It covers both rescheduling and outright removal from the scheduling system, meaning it would apply to a Schedule III move as well as any proposal to deschedule marijuana entirely.

The practical target is the administrative hearing DEA has set for June 29, 2026. That hearing, announced alongside the April 23, 2026 DOJ rescheduling order, is the formal legal proceeding needed to complete marijuana’s reclassification from Schedule I to Schedule III for all products — not just those already covered by executive action. Block the funding for it, and the hearing cannot proceed. Without the hearing, a final rule completing broader rescheduling stalls.

The committee’s bill next goes to the House Rules Committee, which will set the terms for floor consideration before a full House vote.

The Conflict With the Administration’s Move

The rider arrives weeks after the Justice Department took the most consequential executive action on cannabis scheduling in decades. On April 23, 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that state-licensed medical cannabis products and FDA-approved marijuana products were immediately placed in Schedule III — a move carried out under executive authority to fulfill U.S. obligations under an international narcotics treaty. The April action also launched the expedited hearing process for broader rescheduling.

Blanche described the move as delivering on President Trump’s December 18, 2025, executive order directing the Justice Department to expedite the rescheduling process. “The Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump’s promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options,” Blanche said in the announcement.

Because the April 23, 2026 action took immediate effect under executive authority rather than through a standard rulemaking process, whether a spending restriction could unwind it is genuinely unsettled. Legal analysts have noted that an appropriations rider prevents spending on specified activities but does not itself repeal a regulatory action already in force. The likelier consequence of the rider, if enacted, would be to cut off resources for the June hearing and stall any final rule covering marijuana not currently covered by the Blanche order — most significantly, adult-use products in the more than two dozen states where recreational cannabis is legal.

For state-licensed medical operators already covered by Schedule III status and working through the resulting compliance and registration requirements — as covered in DEA Extends Medical Marijuana Registration to the Full Supply Chain — the rider’s most immediate effect may be uncertainty: if the underlying administrative process is blocked, the durability of the federal tax relief that comes with Schedule III status could face legal challenges.

What the Same Bill Preserves — and the Outlook

The same appropriations bill retains the rider that has protected state medical cannabis programs from Justice Department interference since 2014. This year’s version includes Nebraska for the first time — voters there approved medical cannabis legalization in November 2024, and the state had been left off prior versions of the list. The addition closes a gap that left Nebraska’s state-licensed operators without the federal non-interference protection available to every other state with a medical program.

The bill also directs the DEA and FDA to take enforcement action against unregulated intoxicating cannabinoid products — addressed separately in House Panel Directs DEA to Act on Unregulated Cannabinoid Products.

House committees have approved similar anti-rescheduling language in multiple recent cycles, and each time it was stripped from final appropriations agreements before reaching the president’s desk. In January 2026, congressional leaders specifically removed the provision from the FY2026 final deal while preserving the state medical protections. The Senate has not included anti-rescheduling language in its own versions of this bill in those earlier rounds, and Senate Democrats retain the ability to block provisions they oppose in final negotiations.

Whether House Republicans can hold this provision through conference now — with the Trump administration more visibly committed to rescheduling than its predecessor was — is the question that matters most for operators and patients tracking the June hearing. State medical operators in programs that have already updated their compliance footing based on Schedule III status, including those operating under California DCC guidance updated after the April rescheduling order, have the clearest near-term stake in whether that hearing proceeds.