Regulation
Doctors and Pharma Company Sue Trump Over Cannabis Rescheduling
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The legal battle over the Trump administration’s marijuana rescheduling order has a new front. A coalition of anti-cannabis physicians, addiction treatment providers, and a cannabis-focused biopharmaceutical company filed a petition for judicial review late last week with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, seeking to block the April order that moved state-licensed medical marijuana into Schedule III of the federal Controlled Substances Act.
President Trump is among the named defendants — an unusual addition to a regulatory lawsuit — alongside Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Drug Enforcement Administration Administrator Terrance Cole, the Justice Department, and the DEA as agencies.
What the rescheduling order did
Acting AG Blanche signed the rescheduling order on April 22, 2026. The Justice Department published it in the Federal Register on April 28, 2026, and the order took effect immediately. Two categories of cannabis products moved out of Schedule I: FDA-approved drug products containing marijuana, and cannabis products operating under a qualifying state medical marijuana license. Both now sit in Schedule III alongside prescription drugs such as anabolic steroids and ketamine.
The Justice Department grounded the action in the treaty-implementation provision of the Controlled Substances Act — a clause that allows the Attorney General to reschedule drugs to carry out U.S. obligations under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs without completing the standard notice-and-comment rulemaking process. That procedural shortcut is the central point of contention in every legal challenge filed so far.
What the new suit argues
The petition alleges the rescheduling order was issued without prior notice-and-comment rulemaking, without a formal hearing on the record, and without acting on the recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services — the statutory process that was already underway under a prior proposed rulemaking from the Biden era.
Beyond the procedural objections, the suit raises substantive challenges. The petitioners argue that the administration created a regulatory framework Congress never authorized: marijuana sits nominally in Schedule III, but the order preserves manufacturing quotas, import-export permit requirements, and enhanced registration requirements that are typically reserved for Schedule I and II substances. The suit describes this as a “hybrid schedule” that functions more restrictively than what Schedule III actually permits under federal drug law.
The equal protection argument is the most novel element. The petitioners contend that the order treats chemically identical cannabis products differently based solely on whether they carry a state medical marijuana license or receive FDA approval — a distinction they argue has no rational basis in the Controlled Substances Act’s structure and violates the equal protection requirements embedded in the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment due process clause.
MMJ International Holdings, the biopharmaceutical company in the coalition, brings a distinct competitive grievance: that the rescheduling creates an expedited federal registration pathway for state-licensed marijuana dispensaries while pharmaceutical developers conducting formal clinical trials — including MMJ, which the company reports is running active trials for Huntington’s disease and multiple sclerosis — continue waiting for FDA-pathway approval with no comparable fast track. The argument reframes the order not as neutral drug-policy reform but as one that favors plant-touching state licensees over federally compliant pharmaceutical developers.
The other petitioners are New Directions Addiction Recovery Services, Cannabis Industry Victims Educating Litigators, and two individual physicians. Americans Against Legalizing Marijuana highlighted the filing, calling the rescheduling action “one of the most haphazard and legally indefensible drug-policy actions in modern American history.” The coalition is asking the court to pause the rescheduling order while review proceeds, declare it unlawful, and vacate it entirely.
A crowded appellate docket
This petition lands on top of an already active docket at the D.C. Circuit. The court has already consolidated earlier lawsuits from Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, and attorneys general from Indiana, Nebraska, and Louisiana — all challenging the same April order on overlapping procedural and statutory grounds. Three Republican AGs sued to block the rescheduling in late May 2026.
Whether the court consolidates the newer petition with those earlier cases or keeps it on a separate track will shape the litigation timeline. A stay request is pending in the consolidated proceedings.
The rescheduling order itself remains in effect. State cannabis regulators continue operating under the resulting guidance gap, and the DEA’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary Registration Portal is open for state licensees seeking federal Schedule III registration.
The broader administrative hearing on the proposed rescheduling of marijuana — a separate process that runs on a parallel track to the appellate litigation — is scheduled to begin before the DEA on June 29, 2026. An adverse appellate ruling could potentially reshape its scope before that proceeding gets far.
