Supreme Court denies review of medical pot law SAN FRANCISCO San Bernardino, San Diego counties sued over Prop. 215

The state Supreme Court turned back a challenge to California's medical marijuana law Thursday from two counties that said they were being forced to condone federal drug-law violations by state-approved pot users.

San Diego and San Bernardino county officials had sued to overturn Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that legalized medical marijuana, and a more recent law that required them to issue identification cards to users who had a doctor's recommendation.

The justices unanimously denied review of an appellate decision in July that concluded California was free to decide whether to punish drug users under its own laws, despite the federal ban on marijuana.

The decision is "a momentous victory for countless seriously ill patients," said Adam Wolf, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who defended the state law in the appeals court. He said the counties should stop wasting money "in a doomed effort to undermine the will of California voters."

But Thomas Bunton, a deputy San Diego County counsel, said the county would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

The California law "authorizes people to engage in conduct that's forbidden by federal law," Bunton said.

He said San Diego and San Bernardino counties particularly objected to the follow-up statute on identification cards that the Legislature passed in 2003. The cards, issued by the counties, protect their holders from arrest by state or local police for possessing small amounts of medical marijuana.

The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed federal authorities to rely on U.S. drug laws to prosecute medical marijuana patients and their suppliers, and to shut dispensaries in California and the 11 other states with laws similar to Prop. 215. But the court has not prevented the states from deciding which drugs to prohibit under their own laws.

In a separate case, the city of Garden Grove (Orange County) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a California appellate ruling requiring police to return a patient's medical marijuana after state charges were dismissed. That case also involves a potential conflict between federal and state law.

In the counties' lawsuit, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego ruled July 31 that federal law doesn't require states to impose criminal penalties for marijuana possession. The purpose of the federal law, the court said, is "to combat recreational drug use, not to regulate a state's medical practices."