Bill to Legalize Marijuana Passes in the House

On Friday, the House of Representatives passed a new bill by a vote of 220-204–the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act–which would legalize the possession and sale of marijuana.

Although marijuana is now legal in many states, its use and sale remain a federal crime.

The bill will now make its way to the Senate, where it is unclear if it will garner sufficient votes to pass.

If passed, the landmark criminal justice reform legislation would be an important step forward for racial justice, given that drug crimes have been disproportionately enforced against Black Americans and other minorities.

The bill would also mark an important change in the immigration law. Countless immigrants have been subjected to removal as a result of low-level marijuana convictions. By taking marijuana off the list of federal controlled substances in Title 21, future marijuana convictions in other jurisdictions would no longer meet the federal definition of a controlled substance for purposes of INA 202(a)(2)(A)(i)(II) or INA 237(a)(2)(B)(i). As the Supreme Court found in Mellouli v. Lynch, 135 S. Ct. 1980, 1988 (2015), in examining the question in the deportability context, applying the categorical analysis “must be faithful to the text, which limits the meaning of ‘controlled substance,’ for removal purposes, to the substances controlled under §802. We therefore reject the argument that any drug offense renders an alien removable, without regard to the appearance of the drug on a §802 schedule.”

IE