NYC Sheriff Can Again Conduct Warrantless Hemp Shop Searches (1)

New York’s cannabis agency and the New York City Sheriff’s Office can conduct warrantless searches and seizures of licensed hemp stores, a state appeals court ruled Thursday.

The decision reverses a lower court order that barred the state and law enforcement from conducting warrantless searches and seizures of licensed hemp stores, including five retailers in New York City who filed suit after their products were seized by the sheriff’s office.

The lower court abused its discretion in granting the retailers’ request for a preliminary injunction, Associate Justice Justin O. Corcoran of the New York Supreme Court Third Appellate Department wrote for the court. The retailers failed to show that the state law and regulations allowing for warrantless searches “is invalid in all of its applications,” Corcoran added.

The state’s cannabis legalization statute allows any county or city to adopt local laws authorizing an officer or agency to conduct regulatory inspections of hemp or cannabis businesses that aren’t listed in the Office of Cannabis Management’s hemp or cannabis business directories. The New York City code also authorizes the sheriff to inspect businesses it suspects may be selling cannabis without a license.

The five plaintiff businesses were subject to those warrantless regulatory inspections throughout 2024. The city said products seized and tested from one business were found to contain psilocybin, which is illegal to sell in the state. Officers also allegedly found unlicensed cannabis products being sold in some of the others.

Meaningful Limits

The retailers said in their brief that some of those seized products were marked “not for New York sale” and were meant to be sold online to customers in other states.

The searches, carried out by inspectors and teams of eight to 15 armed officers went “beyond retail areas to locked safes, basement storage, and personal property,” violating their constitutional right to be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Third Department disagreed. The state law and its implementing regulations “adequately define how inspections are conducted” and place meaningful limits on the discretion of officers, Corcoran said. Among other things, the regulations require applicants, as a condition of licensure, to consent in advance to regulatory inspections of their premises. While businesses are require to cooperate with inspectors, the regulations don’t authorize inspectors to break into locked cabinets or storage rooms.

The businesses countered that the inspections’ main purpose is to find contraband and detect criminal activity, but the court noted no criminal convictions resulted from them.

“An otherwise lawful administrative search is not rendered unconstitutional merely because police participate in the search or because the search uncovers evidence of criminal activity,” Corcoran said.

The lower court wrongly concluded that the businesses were likely to succeed on their facial constitutional challenge, he added. It’s also premature for the businesses to challenge the way in which the inspections were applied to their particular businesses since those claims haven’t undergone administrative review, the court said.

Associate Justices Christine M. Clark, Sharon A.M. Aarons, Stan L. Pritzker, and L. Michael Mackey joined in Corcoran’s ruling.

Robert M. Marx of Northport, N.Y., represents the cannabis businesses.

The case is Super Smoke N Save LLC v. N.Y. State Cannabis Control Bd., N.Y. App. Div., 3d Dep’t, No. CV-25-0165, opinion 6/11/26.