ANALYSIS: Cannabis Lawsuit Targets Congress’s Power Over Pot

Four Massachusetts marijuana companies are suing the US attorney general for a judgment that the Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to intrastate cannabis commerce. Such a decision would counter a 19-year-old US Supreme Court ruling and relieve state-legal cannabis companies of unique regulatory and financial burdens that Congress has so far struggled to resolve.

The plaintiffs in Canna Provisions Inc. v. Garland—including industry giant Verano—argue that the legal landscape of today’s national cannabis market would be unrecognizable to the Supreme Court of 2005. It was in that year that the justices decided in Gonzales v. Raich ...