Bowser: D.C. won't back down in Chaffetz pot showdown An 11th-hour warning from key House Republicans escalates a legal dispute over marijuana in the District.

Mayor Muriel Bowser announced Wednesday that Washington, D.C., will move forward with implementing marijuana legalization in the nation’s capital at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, defying warnings from congressional Republicans who have argued that the city is acting illegally.

“The law will go into effect one minute after midnight,” the Democratic mayor said at a press briefing Wednesday afternoon, appearing with D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, Attorney General Karl Racine and several members of the city council.


In response to a stern letter co-authored by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz cautioning D.C. against moving forward with the law to legalize the home use and transfer of recreational cannabis, Bowser said: “Bullying the District of Columbia is not what his constituents expect, nor do ours.”

The mayor said that she and city officials would continue “good-faith discussions” with Chaffetz and other members of Congress to arrive at a possible solution and said she would be meeting soon with U.S Attorney Ronald Machen.

Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, and House Oversight Government Operations Subcommittee Chairman Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, wrote Bowser late Tuesday night saying implementing D.C.’s Initiative 71 would be illegal, creating deep uncertainty about the fate of legal pot in D.C. and previewing a potential showdown between the city and the federal government.

“Your assertion that Initiative 71 takes effect on Thursday is contrary to law,” the lawmakers wrote. “We strongly suggest you reconsider your position.”

Meadows told POLITICO that they are calling for D.C. most immediately to postpone implementing the law, but declined to offer more specifics on potential legal action. “We are hopeful that decisions will be made to postpone the implementation of this initiative. … There are many areas where we can work with the D.C. government and support the mayor’s agenda, but this initiative is not one of them,” he said.

The surprise move comes at the end of an otherwise uneventful 30-day congressional review period during which lawmakers made little effort to stop the arrival of legal pot in the nation’s capital: Party leaders barely talked about it, no congressional committees held hearings and neither chamber took a vote to try to block it.

That gave confidence to Bowser, who said at a Mayor’s Council breakfast Tuesday that she believed the ballot initiative, which D.C. voters approved in November, would become law after passing congressional review on Feb. 26. “We have spent the last several weeks ensuring its responsible implementation,” she said. At the meeting, top city officials — Mendelson, Racine and D.C. Chief of Police Cathy Lanier — presented a united front, outlining for council members how law enforcement and City Hall would implement and enforce the law.

Speaking with reporters after the breakfast, Bowser said she didn’t know what Congress would do, but reiterated that she had received no “advice” from Meadows, the subcommittee chairman whom she identified as working closest with the city. A spokeswoman for Meadows on Wednesday said that the two met last week but did not discuss Initiative 71.

When asked whether the city is prepared to defend against a legal challenge to the law, either from congressional Republicans or private citizens, Bowser said flatly: “The city will defend the will of the people.”

The dispute hinges on when D.C. would “enact” the law — city officials say D.C. voters enacted the law when they approved it in November, while Chaffetz and Meadows say the law cannot be enacted until the end of a congressional review period on Thursday.

Several congressional Democrats on Wednesday came out in support of D.C., including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “It is very troubling that Republicans would threaten elected District officials for implementing the measure resoundingly passed by the District of Columbia’s voters,” the California Democrat said in a statement.

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, said she and city officials have the accurate reading of the law. “The District is not responsible if the Republican language failed to convey their apparent intent, and their failure should not result in unbecoming threats to District officials, who are acting in good faith on advice from their lawyers,” she said.

Four other congressional Democrats — John Conyers of Michigan, Nita Lowey and José Serrano of New York and Oversight ranking member Elijah Cummings of Maryland — also said in a joint statement Wednesday that D.C. “has the legal authority to implement Initiative 71.”

For weeks, it looked as though GOP lawmakers would keep quiet on the D.C. law — silence that many took as another signal that Republicans were backing down on marijuana legalization, a policy backed by a slim majority of Americans and particularly popular among the young voters the party is desperately courting.

Congressional Republicans never made a serious effort to block the law. Even GOP Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland — the most vocal opponent of Initiative 71 in Congress and who pushed hardest for the rider aiming to shut it down — offered only slight resistance. “Congress took clear action to stop enactment of legalization of marijuana in D.C,” Harris told POLITICO, referring to the congressional rider.

But Harris has not announced any plans to take legal action against D.C., and has barely mentioned Initiative 71, a far cry from when he told POLITICO in December that D.C. residents should move out of the city if they don’t like congressional oversight.

Then came Tuesday night’s lightning bolt from Chaffetz and Meadows, which asserted that the mayor would be “in knowing and willful violation of the law” by moving forward on implementation.

The first step for the mayor, a spokeswoman for Chaffetz said, would be to respond to the letter by March 10 with the information the lawmakers requested: a list of employees involved in implementing Initiative 71, the amount of money used to gear up for its implementation and any other relevant information. Neither Chaffetz, nor Meadows has announced any concrete legal action that they might take against the city if it decides to go forward with the initiative.

The standoff between D.C. and some congressional Republicans began in earnest when D.C. voters overwhelmingly approved the ballot proposition in November. Initiative 71 legalizes the home use and transfer — but not sale — of small amounts of marijuana for recreational use in D.C for residents 21 and older. Medical marijuana is already legal in Washington and recreational cannabis is decriminalized, punishable by a fine.

About a month later, a group of congressional Republicans — led by anti-legalization hard-liners Harris, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky and John Fleming of Louisiana — inserted language into the $1.01 trillion government spending bill to cast doubt on the initiative.

“[N]one of the funds contained in this act may be used to enact any law, rule or regulation” that would legalize or lessen the criminal penalty for any Schedule I drug, including marijuana,” the rider said.

D.C. officials, though, have maintained that voters enacted the law when they approved it in November, and therefore the language doesn’t apply to Initiative 71. D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson last month submitted the ballot initiative to Congress to begin the 30-day process to review the law. During a review, Congress, under the Home Rule Act, can block any D.C. law by passing a joint resolution of disapproval.

Even before the letter by Chaffetz and Meadows , D.C. officials suggested they were readying for a potential legal challenge to the law. Mendelson told POLITICO that he thought the initiative would likely end up in court after a D.C. resident is arrested under federal drug laws for marijuana possession. Asked whether he thought the city would defend the law under legal challenge, Mendelson responded: “I would say yes.”

Republicans, particularly potential 2016 presidential hopefuls, have increasingly avoided talking about pot legalization, a tricky issue particularly for a party that has long championed states’ rights and local control. “This is an issue that is moving away from Republicans,” Holmes-Norton said in an interview with POLITICO earlier this month. “They would rather not talk about it. And I’m not at all sure that they want to be thrust into a middle of a marijuana debate as they begin to demonstrate that they can govern.”

According to multiple sources who attended meetings with lawmakers about the initiative during the review period, Republicans were indeed concerned about being seen as the anti-pot party. “Many Republicans don’t want to vote on this at all and will be annoyed if leadership pushes for a vote on an issue they don’t want to take a position on yet,” Malik Burnett of the Drug Policy Alliance, which favors legalization, said in an email in January.

At Tuesday’s meeting, even as D.C. officials expressed their intention to move forward with the law, many expressed concerns about limitations on the city from the congressional rider. Initiative 71 does not apply to federal places, meaning that residents living in public housing will be unable to possess marijuana in their homes. At least one council member wondered aloud whether individuals would be evicted for using marijuana in public housing, and several raised concerns about how the police would enforce the law.

“There is an element of going with the flow on this,” Racine said at the meeting.

Legalization advocates and D.C. officials also remain frustrated that the congressional rider disallows the city council from passing a law to establish a taxation and regulatory structure for legal weed.

“The rider prevents us from a reasonable way to regulate the sale of marijuana in the District of Columbia,” Bowser said at Wednesday’s briefing.

At least five states are preparing to vote on legalization of recreational marijuana in 2016 — Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts and Nevada. There are efforts to put the issue on ballots in Florida, Missouri and Montana.

Four states since 2012 — Colorado, Washington state, Oregon and Alaska — have voted to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, and a Vermont state senator has introduced legislation for his state.