In fact, the third time was no sweeter for the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission's licensing process.

A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge on Wednesday issued a restraining order blocking AMCC from granting a general facility license, the third time in previous attempts, that the plaintiff companies who filed suit against the commission He said it is likely that AMCC will prove that Alabama violated the law. A flawed voting process was used to enact the law.

Judge James Anderson also issued an order authorizing the plaintiffs to remove up to six individuals for the purpose of clarifying AMCC's accreditation process and the motivations behind certain actions, and issued a mass Authorized subpoena of documents.

Anderson gave AMCC until Jan. 19 to submit documents and await depositions. He set a hearing on the matter for Jan. 24.

The plaintiffs in this case (several medical marijuana companies denied licenses by the AMCC) believe that something nefarious is involved with the AMCC and its bizarre licensing process, favoring certain companies. I've been claiming for months that it looks like this. At one court hearing, a lawyer for a plaintiff company told Anderson that allowing the deposition would “collapse” the entire “plan.”

Regardless of whether there was a “plan” or not, Mr. Anderson has on three separate occasions made mistakes, missteps, bizarre occurrences, and violations of law and procedure that have stalled the AMCC process. That's for sure. Following each of the two previous restraining orders issued by the court, AMCC acknowledged that its processes were flawed and agreed to a list of corrective actions.

At issue here is the method by which the AMCC voted on the 33 companies competing for licenses. Instead of holding a public debate and narrowing down the choices to a final five, the committee chose to use a ranking system conducted by secret ballot (which was later made public). In this system, each committee member ranked companies from his No. 1 to his No. 33, and the average was used to select the top five companies.

However, the plaintiffs argued that such a system violates the Alabama Administrative Procedure Act, which requires the commission to have a majority of its members vote to approve the list of winners. The AMCC system allows four members to rank a company highly, but a fifth member could score the company near the bottom of the list, effectively knocking it out of the top five. There is. That would give the minority on the committee more power than the majority, which would violate AAPA.

Additionally, the committee did not have an actual public discussion of the companies, leaving speculation that the decision was taken outside of a public meeting. For example, when selecting minority-owned companies, which is a legal requirement, commissioners voted against approving the highest-ranked minority-owned company and approved a company two ranks below. There was no debate on the move, making it the commissioners' only vote against the ranking system.

In his order that once again stalls Alabama's medical marijuana process, Anderson acknowledged the fact that continued legal confusion is likely to impact the timeliness in which cannabis products are provided to patients. But he said it was in the public interest to ensure that the law and due process were followed.