United States Ninth Circuit

Order permanently enjoining the federal government from either: 1) revoking a physician's license to prescribe controlled substances; or, 2) conducting an investigation of a physician that might lead to such revocation, affirmed, where the basis for the government action would be solely the physician's "recommendation" of the use of medical marijuana, which is expression protected by the First Amendment.

Appellate Information

• Argued 04/08/2002
• Decided 10/29/2002
• Published 10/29/2002

Judges

• SCHROEDER, Chief Judge., Before: SCHROEDER, Chief Judge, B. FLETCHER and KOZINSKI, Circuit Judges.

Court

• United States Ninth Circuit

Counsel

• For Appellant:
  
• Stephen C. Willey, Latham & Watkins, Menlo Park, CA, for amici American Public Health Association, et al., Julie M. Carpenter, Robert M. Portman, and Janis C. Kestenbaum, Jenner & Block, Washington, DC, for amici California Medical Association, et al.


• For Appellees:
  
• Mark B. Stern,Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for the defendants-appellants., Graham A. Boyd, ACLU Drug Policy Litigation, New Haven, CT, Jonathan Weissglass, Altshuler, Berzon, Nussbaum, Rubin & Demain, San Francisco, CA, Daniel N. Abrahamson, Drug Policy Alliance, Oakland, CA, Ann Brick, ACLU Foundation of Northern California, San Francisco, CA, for the plaintiffs-appellees.